Meta, the United States and social media giant, will not be signing the European Union’s Code of Practice on General Purpose AI.

This was disclosed in a statement on Friday by the company’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan.

“Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI. We have carefully reviewed the European Commission’s Code of Practice for GPAI models and Meta won’t be signing it,” he said, adding that the Code “introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.”

The EU last week unveiled the Code of Practice on General Purpose AI—a voluntary framework addressing transparency, copyright, and safety concerns—to support developers of AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini in aligning with the EU AI Act.

Companies that sign on are expected to comply with the Act and may benefit from greater legal certainty, while those that opt out could face increased regulatory scrutiny.

The provisions of the AI Act targeting GPAI systems will come into effect on August 2.

However, the full implementation of the Act—which regulates AI systems based on the level of risk they pose to society—will take an additional two years.

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has stated it intends to sign the Code once it is finalized.

However, the drafting process has faced criticism from both major tech firms and CEOs of European companies, who argue they need more time to meet the proposed requirements.

“We share concerns raised by these businesses that this over-reach will throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe, and stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them,” Kaplan said.