I doubt it’s the end of AI access in Europe. Even if they do fine them 3% of global turnover, that’s probably a small enough fraction of their European revenue that it’s worth the risk. After all if they drop European traffic it’s not like it’ll change their fixed costs, and the marginal cost to serve Europe is probably relatively small compared to their fixed costs.

I do think it’s most likely that they will end up fining the AI companies quite a bit under this act. It seems like a bit of a pattern with European legislation that disproportionately impacts American tech companies.

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bestham an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I really oppose the notion that “European legislation … disproportionately impacts American tech companies”. US tech has a profound impact on the lives of everyday Europeans while the US has almost no checks and balances in place for the tech industry. Europeans are ought to be able decide how they want to live their lives and build a society. This must include deciding how much influence American tech companies shall be allowed to have by passing laws for Europe.

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benoau an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The whole premise ignores how much the same companies are fined and settling for in the US, for many of the same reasons: privacy abuse, market abuse, societal abuse, worker abuse, etc. Pound for pound the recent Meta settlement has certainly skewed the numbers much higher for the US too.

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consensus1 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Isn't part of " Europeans are ought to be able to decide how they want to live their lives" that they have the choice of using products of US tech companies?

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refactor_master 32 minutes ago | parent [-]

If my manager's manager's manager decides, for any number of reasons, to buy a product which is using US-based technology, then I don't reasonably have the option to "vote with my feet", but I do have a fallback called Regulation, which works its way all the way up the chain automatically.

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consensus1 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

Why would you ever expect that you would have a choice of what products you use at work? You are being paid to work there. And yes, if you feel that strongly, you absolutely do have the option to vote with your feet at any time.

	▲	lurk2 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		[delayed]

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spiderfarmer an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Also, most US citizens want the same regulations as EU citizens, but only one of them have a functioning government.

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alejoar 43 minutes ago | parent [-]

No they don't.

	▲	Barrin92 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Roughly half of American states have passed extensive internet regulation in the last few years to the point of entire businesses exciting their states, and that's the conservative parts of America. The American public, of various creeds and political orientations is as, if honestly not more skeptical of US tech companies. They simply have no control over their government, which is captured by tech CEOs. The recent anti datacenter activism extends to IIRC over 40 states now and has roughly 70% largely bipartisan support.

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pjmlp an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Poor American companies, who thinks of them when Chinese government does similar actions, and they play ball, regardless of the government actions.

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satvikpendem 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Perhaps the fines themselves act as a de facto AI tax that some people have been trying to promote in the political sphere, and we'll see how successful it is.

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toenail an hour ago | parent [-]

Fines escalate when there is no compliance.

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satvikpendem an hour ago | parent [-]

Then they'll just pull out eventually and save everyone the trouble.

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stymaar an hour ago | parent [-]

Like how Apple famously pulled out of the EU?

	▲	razemio 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They did with some services. Not sure if there is a list. For one I am missing phone mirroring to my mac which they disabled because they do want to give api access.

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an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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Gerard22Aug an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It's a (successful?) lobbying attempt by Mistral. They are falling behind on tech and they want to win on another stupid EU law. You know what will happen next? There will be an exception carved in for "developing countries" ... like China.

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satvikpendem an hour ago | parent [-]

Why would they, both the EU and Mistral specifically, want Chinese models? Isn't the (de facto, underlying) point of the act to raise up homegrown companies like Mistral?

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spiderfarmer an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It’s how conspiracy theories work: find out who could theoretically profit, blame them and spread it as fact. It doesn’t have to stand up to scrutiny, if it sounds plausible “you told them like it is”.

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satvikpendem an hour ago | parent [-]

That doesn't make any sense because Mistral wouldn't profit if Chinese models are allowed so not sure why the person above thinks the EU would add a China exemption.

	▲	stymaar an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Mistral is serving GLM in addition to their own models. But conspiracy theory don't have to make sense in the first place.

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SyneRyder an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The Chinese models are open weights, so they can host & finetune them in the EU. Mistral is calling them "European Compute Units". Mistral has pivoted to become a hosting provider of open weight LLMs.

"Mistral’s platform will support third-party open models, starting with Z.ai’s GLM-5.2. This and future open models will run on the same infrastructure, regional controls, and service commitments as Mistral models, so customers can broaden model choice without fragmenting where their AI runs."

"European Compute Units, or ECUs, convert those commitments into access to Mistral-built infrastructure over multiple years."

https://mistral.ai/news/regional-inference-open-models-new-c...

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pdpi 41 minutes ago | parent [-]

Giving open weight models more leeway “feels” right, but it’s a massive self-pwn based on the mother of all back doors.

It’s a little bit like saying “sysadmins need work visas and vetting, but this guy works for free, so just give him root and don’t think too hard about it”.

	▲	hvb2 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		For Europe the choices are, foreign actor A or foreign actor B. I don't think the current US administration has shown themselves to be less hostile than China...