Meta did not say the EU had banned Llama. In July 2024, it said it would withhold its planned multimodal Llama model from the EU, citing what it called the “unpredictable nature” of Europe’s regulatory environment. Contemporaneous reporting connected the decision to unresolved GDPR questions about training on European users’ data. A later Irish regulator update described revised training plans, but did not establish the availability of every subsequent Llama model or Meta AI feature in Europe.
What Meta announced in July 2024
On July 17, 2024, Axios reported that Meta would not release its next multimodal Llama model in the European Union and would also withhold future multimodal models there. The company told Axios: “We will release a multimodal Llama model over the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment.” Axios reported the announcement.
The planned model was described as able to reason across video, audio, images, and text. Axios linked the practical difficulty to how Meta could train on European users’ data while complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Its report distinguished this data-protection concern from the EU AI Act, which was then being finalized; that distinction is Axios’s account of the issue, not a formal legal ruling. Read Axios’s contemporaneous report.
Why GDPR and user data were part of the dispute
In June 2024, Meta said the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), its lead regulator, had asked it to delay training large language models on public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram. Meta argued that using local content mattered for understanding European languages, geography, culture, and references. It said it could not launch Meta AI in Europe at that time without training on such material. These were Meta’s explanations of the consequences of the delay, not findings by the regulator. Meta’s June 2024 statement.
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Meta also said it remained confident its approach complied with European law. That was the company’s position; it should not be read as a determination that the DPC had cleared the proposed training. In its later account, the DPC said it had identified issues in Meta’s proposed rollout and that Meta informed the commission in June 2024 that it would pause the training plan. Meta’s account and the DPC’s account of the pause describe the engagement from different perspectives.
Training a model is not the same as releasing it
The 2024 news involved two connected but distinct matters: whether Meta could use certain European users’ content to train generative AI models, and whether Meta would make a particular multimodal model available in the EU. The DPC’s action concerned the proposed training plan. Meta’s July announcement concerned the model’s release in the region. The dispute over training formed important context for the release decision, but the two are not interchangeable.
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Likewise, Meta’s statement that the regulatory environment was unpredictable was its stated reason for withholding the planned model. It does not mean the EU had issued a blanket ban on Llama or on multimodal AI.
What changed in the DPC’s May 2025 update
On May 21, 2025, Ireland’s DPC said Meta had reassessed its proposal after the European Data Protection Board issued a GDPR opinion in December 2024. Meta provided updated documentation. The DPC said Meta planned to begin training its generative AI models on May 27, 2025, following recommendations from the DPC and feedback from other EU and European Economic Area authorities. Read the DPC’s May 2025 update.
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The DPC described changes to Meta’s approach, including:
- Updated notices for users about AI training.
- A more usable form for objecting to the use of data.
- Longer notice periods.
- Access to the objection process in Meta apps across Europe.
- Changes to data safeguards and assessments.
The commission said it would monitor the rollout. Its statement updates the account of Meta’s training plans; it does not, by itself, confirm that every later multimodal Llama model or consumer-facing Meta AI feature became available throughout Europe.
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Does this mean multimodal Llama is available in Europe now?
The cited announcements establish Meta’s July 2024 decision and the DPC’s May 2025 account of revised AI-training plans. They do not establish current EU availability or licensing for each later multimodal Llama model, or the availability of every Meta AI feature by country. Those are model- and service-specific questions and should be checked against Meta’s current product documentation and regional availability information.
Meta’s July 2024 Llama 3.1 announcement provides context about the model family and developer ecosystem, but it is not evidence that the planned multimodal model was available in Europe. Meta’s Llama 3.1 announcement.
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