Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm joined other technology leaders in co-signing an open letter criticising the European Union’s (EU) AI and data privacy rules, warning lawmakers that a fragmented approach will further stunt the bloc’s economic and technological advancement.

More than 40 executives and researchers, including Ekholm, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify boss Daniel Ek, signed the letter which stated Europe “has become less competitive and less innovative compared to other regions” due to “inconsistent regulatory decision making”.

The companies, which include technology and research institutions, also bemoaned interventions by data protection authorities which has led to uncertainty around what kind of datasets can be used to train models.

“This means the next generation of open source AI models, and products, services we build on them, won’t understand or reflect European knowledge, culture or languages,” the letter read, warning the continent will miss out on innovations such as the Meta AI assistant, with European rollout of the service delayed due to data privacy concerns.

EU’s landmark AI Act officially entered into force last month, requiring companies to meet transparency requirements, publish detailed report of the content used in AI training, and conduct safety tests before launching AI products.

The lack of clarity and harmonisation in rules policing the development and deployment of AI will prevent EU in reaping the benefits of open-sourced and multimodal models, which the signatories described as the “two cornerstones of AI innovation”.

Earlier this year, Meta Platforms revealed its open-sourced language model Llama will not be released in the EU, highlighting the bloc’s regulatory environment as factor behind the decision.

The letter further argued the unavailability of “frontier-level models” like Llama will deprive “Europeans of the technological advances enjoyed in the US, China and India”, as the technology has progressed research in various industries.

“[EU regulators] can choose to reassert the principle of harmonisation enshrined in regulatory frameworks like the GDPR so that AI innovation happens here at the same scale and speed as elsewhere. Or, it can continue to reject progress, betray the ambitions of the single market and watch as the rest of the world builds on technologies that Europeans will not have access to,” the letter added.