Executives from Google and Meta claim that strict regulations are holding back Europe’s AI industry, echoing concerns from the Trump administration that heavy tech rules are stifling innovation.
At the Techarena tech conference in Stockholm, Sweden, public policy chiefs from Google and Meta criticized the EU’s strict regulations on AI and machine learning, arguing that they hinder innovation and competitiveness.
“I think there is now broad consensus that European regulation around technology has its issues, and sometimes it’s too fragmented, like GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation], sometimes it goes too far, like the AI Act,” Chris Yiu, Meta’s director of public policy, told an audience of tech founders and investors at Techarena on Thursday.