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Google Bard blocks all European Union countries
- pelorat 3y agoTo be fair, a lot of Google services are not available in the EU.
- jruohonen 3y agoIf the GDPR is behind the block, as alleged in this article, blocking will not save them (from a legal perspective).
- Raudius 3y agoDo you have a source for this? According to: https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rules-business-and-organisations/application-regulation/who-does-data-protection-law-apply_en https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/r... > Provided your company doesn't specifically target its services at individuals in the EU, it is not subject to the rules of the GDPR.
- jruohonen 3y agoWell that is right there in the FAQ you posted, assuming that they're processing personal data of Europeans (which they presumably do).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- column 3y agoand Switzerland
- anonyfox 3y agoSo they give up the largest market in the world (European countries combined) to their competitors right from the start. Smart move :-)
- snacktaster 3y agoI would suggest that EU should produce it's own AI company to compete at that scale in their own market but we all know that's not going to happen. Just get angry they can't access the American companies technology anymore.
- prepend 3y agoRemember Quaero? [0] Back when Europe (really just France and Germany) tried to make their own google competitor to prevent English language dominance? They spent at least $99M and really did nothing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero
- FpUser 3y agoSo having largest "internal" market the EU still lacks in developing their own products. Smart move :-)
- dukeyukey 3y agoBecause the EU isn't really a market (at least for consumer goods), it's dozens of markets. Despite no tariffs and (very) roughly aligned regulations, you've still got dozens of languages, norms, expectations, and income levels. Something developed and tested in Massachusetts will sell better in Wyoming than something developed and tested in Bulgaria will in Sweden. Funnily enough, despite being part of the EU for decades and still having a comprehensive trade agreement with them, the UK's success in tech is probably more to do with being culturally closer to North America.
- prepend 3y agoEurope stopped being the largest market a few years ago. I’m 2021, the eu gdp was US$17.2T [0]. I think that makes them #3 after China at $17.7[1] and the US at $23.2 [2]. So it’s not that odd that Google and others would prioritize other, larger markets above EU. But still seems pretty bone headed of google to not be capable of including such massive populations and markets at launch. Perhaps they could have used some of those 13k fired workers on this launch. [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EUU/european-union/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EUU/european-union/gdp... [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=china+gdp https://www.google.com/search?q=china+gdp [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=us+gdp https://www.google.com/search?q=us+gdp
- gcatalfamo 3y agoHonestly, announcing public release in 180+ countries, and omitting that you are leaving out half of western civilization, it's outright malignant.
- jasonvorhe 3y agoAs if overly specific semi-truths are anything new in marketing speak. :)
- bioemerl 3y agoI do not think it's remotely fair to Google to be angry at them for following EU laws.
- mellosouls 3y agoAre you being sarcastic or trolling? Google is presumably not competent or willing here to uphold or conform to important law in a leading democratic region, which is rather different to "following" it - and if indicating an intentional direction, pretty much a disgrace for a flagship tech company - so let's hope it's just temporary poor performance (or charitably, a staggered release) unrepresentative of their intentions going forward.
- sclarisse 3y agoThey’re complying by not offering the product. Makes sense to me. It’s a free product. Any effort spent making it compliant is an expense not paid for. Any non compliance is a business risk, with a percent of global revenue at stake. Why take that risk for no benefit? Maybe once they have a revenue model for it and find it profitable things will change. Until then the GDPR is not the essence of all that is good in the world such that only the wicked heathens would dare not pay it homage. That’s imperialistic moralizing of the sort which at this point belongs in the dustbin of history along with Europe’s other collective efforts in the area.
- mellosouls 3y ago
- crucialfelix 3y agoI'm going to be charitable and assume they just need to make sure of GDPR compliance and didn't want to delay further.
- gcatalfamo 3y agoOf course that's the reason, but the way it was delivered it's what makes it embarassing.
- dairylee 3y ago[flagged]
- jylam 3y ago"Google Bard blocks all European Union countries" more like "Google Bard illegal in the European Union", like it is a Google choice at all.
- dtech 3y agoThere's nothing inherently illegal about Bard/ChatGTP (yet). They just want to do stuff like collect all user input and train on it that's illegal in EU.
- bertil 3y agoTo do that, you have to ask for users’ informed consent.
- whazor 3y agoIt makes no sense, UK still has the same consent laws as EU, and Bard is deployed there. Maybe an oversight? It does look like they don't know what they are doing.
- vmilner 3y agoIt makes sense if Google believe the Eu appetite for fines is greater than the UK’s.
- bombolo 3y agoCould it be that UK, the country that spies and records what everyone does, isn't so big on privacy in practice and they thought the risk is less?
- bertil 3y agoI wouldn’t exclude an oversight, given how they didn’t exclude Åland. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35914946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35914946 If you look further down that thread, people also highlighted they included more countries with “adequacy,” i.e., that the EU considers having a comparable privacy regime.
- rikkuri 3y agoInterestingly you can use Bard in Åland Islands, which is part of Finland, which is part of EU. They should have googled Åland Islands.
- nindalf 3y agoThe mistake is understandable because they Barded it.
- rikkuri 3y agoWelcome to world of LLMs where we get facts almost right.
- yorwba 3y agoThat also tells us they didn't actually check for every place on their list whether Bard was compliant with local law – they're simply assuming that some small island country's regulators have no power over them.
- bertil 3y agoÅland is squarely part of the European Union. (It’s also never really claimed to be a country, more a cultural exception within a de-colonization effort and a tax loophole.) The relevant regulator if Google infringes the privacy of someone there would be the central EU authorities.
- yorwba 3y agoIndeed, and even the most cursory legal review should have immediately caught that, so probably there was none, and not for the rest of the list either.
- bertil 3y agoFor anyone wondering how Google could make that mistake: - Talk to your data engineers more often: they knew that would happen and they need your shoulder to cry on. Don’t mention “disputed territories” and time zones unless they feel in a safe place. - Several places are not fully independent countries but are somewhat sovereign. They tend to be listed in lists of ‘countries,’ which is really a list of *‘polities’*. “Polities” include distinctions like the Åland Islands being distinct from mainland Finland. Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily are often not on those lists, despite all having a solid national identity, so those are not always great lists of polities either. And those lists often include military and scientific bases afar, like Antarctic bases and the International Space Station, so… There’s no clear name for it. Essentially, it’s a list of what comes out of a GeoIP lookup. Like Åland, French Polynesia, French Guyana, Reunion Island, both Saint-Martins (French and Dutch), Azores, and Greenland are all polities with very interesting statuses around the EU. Staying “near” the EU, some scientific bases and areas with hardly any population on that list of polities, too: Kerguelen, French Austral Territory, Tristan de Cunha, etc. Those are more curiosities to give content fodder for Wendover Production and administrative exams than actual legal risks for Google, but I thought I’d pile up, to help you develop empathy for Data engineers building privacy filters. The point is: there is no “mainland Finland” in the list of polities: just “Finland — FI” one of 27 members of the EU. “French Polynesia - FP”, “French Guyana - FG” and all the others mentioned above are not on that list of 27 country codes either. Therefore, any territory in the EU but listed as a polity might get excluded from hastily configured EU filters, like what Google seems to have made. I would assume that GPDR does apply to most of the places I mentioned, making the mistake that Google made common among all those edge cases. rikkuri, you are not alone. France seems to be being most of those headaches. However, both the US (with Porto Rico, Guam, and more) and the UK are impressive specialists in confusing sovereignty): the Faroe Islands, the Isle of Man, Guernsey, and Jersey all used to be somehow in the EU, but not when the UK was in. Northern Ireland is probably the most heated situation of all those. I will not go into the nightmare that is deciding between UK, or GB, or one of EN, SC, WA, and NI. Andorra, Monaco, Vatican, San Marino, and Liechtenstein are generally considered outside, or “observers,” of the EU but in the EEA (those countries plus Norway). Pro-tip: EEA is de facto the relevant grouping in most cases. More importantly, all those places plus many rather large actual countries (Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, and Argentina) have privacy rules that are equivalent to the EU’s and have been granted “adequacy” status. I’d expect all those need to be excluded from Bard for the same reason but many are not… Curious. https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/international-dimension-data-protection/adequacy-decisions_en https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/i... to be Overall, that makes a much longer and more complicated list than 27 country codes.
- Thaxll 3y agoWhat's up with Canada?
- Tyr42 3y agoIt can't speak French Soni guess they can't launch or else Quebec will come after them? Maybe?
- joenot443 3y agoThere's no Canadian or Quebecois law which requires American companies to serve their products in French.
- betaby 3y agoActually there are multitude of them in Quebec. https://www.osler.com/en/resources/regulations/2018/quebec-court-of-appeal-confirms-application-of-fre https://www.osler.com/en/resources/regulations/2018/quebec-c...
- jacknews 3y agoQuel dommage!
- WilTimSon 3y agoWell, I suppose that's one benefit of Brexit, isn't it? In all seriousness, it's a shame that the project is going to be restricted from a development standpoint, but, frankly, with Google's reputation for privacy violations and their former clashes with GDPR, this shouldn't be a surprise and, for quite a few people, will be a welcome piece of news.
- indigomm 3y agoThe UK has retained almost all EU law, including GDPR. If GDPR is a problem in the EU, then why isn't it a problem in the UK given the law is identical?
- sgt101 3y agoUK courts work very differently.
- disgruntledphd2 3y agoSo do Irish courts, and it's not available here.
- skilled 3y agoLol so that’s why I can’t use it. I thought it strange that Norway wasn’t part of the 180 countries. Goes to show how much Google values saving face over being honest with its users. Pathetic.
- xiphias2 3y agoMaybe it's time to stop thinking that some countries are better then others and just treat them as different. Your sense of privilege with ,,lol'' means that you consider people in Norway more important than in other countries.
- skilled 3y agoMaybe you shouldn’t reach so hard. I am not even from Norway. Couldn’t care less if they only released it in Uzbekistan.
- Colex 3y agoIt is a very valid strategy. If you do not have all the controls in place to comply with the burdensome requirements of the EU law (if that's the case), then why should you stop from releasing the service in other markets that do not impose such requirements? A lot of comments here have a sense of entitlement that does not make too much sense to me, especially towards a private company doing a first release of a product. (PS: I live in the EU as well)
- prepend 3y agoThey should have used chatgpt to develop their controls. OpenAI figured out how to do it. It’s weird when a company with Googles resources flubs their rollout. They have a main competitor. Their main competitor does something. They launch with not doing something. Typically, a company wants to launch with doing something better than their competitor.
- Colex 3y agoJust to clarify, I'm not commenting on whether it's a good strategy or not, or whether they are doing a great job or not. I just find it weird some comments in this topic accusing of being "malignant" or feeling like Google owes them to have released in the EU. I guess they might just want to launch something as quick as possible as a response to OpenAI and Microsoft's partnership. And this knee-jerk reaction left them with gaps they haven't had the time to fix without being very late to the party. All speculation though.
- gman83 3y agoDo Google's lawyers know something that Microsoft's lawyers don't? Or do they just have more to lose?
- cbeach 3y agoGoogle have felt the sharp end of EU regulations several times, at a cost measured in billions of Euros https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_cases_against_Google_by_the_European_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_cases_against_Goog... Might be a lesson that OpenAI is yet to learn.
- bertil 3y agoOpenAI already went through a cycle with the Italian authorities (with presumably the German regulator listening in too). The fix was very simple: give users the option not to have their queries used for training. We are still pretty far from an anti-trust case, which is generally harder to navigate. GPDR and other EU regulations on privacy and AI have fairly simple principles: if you do something that is not obvious or necessary (like fraud detection), ask for informed consent. Explain what you are doing, make your steps traceable, allow people to be excluded from non-trivial treatment, to delete the personal information they handed over. It makes some processes a little bit harder to set up, but it’s not really a hard lesson you can only learn by being sued for billions. It’s closer to data engineering 101.
- is_true 3y agoThey are probably waiting to see what happens with Open AI's compliance of GDPR
- tomkaos 3y ago...and Canada
- thijser 3y agoI used ChatGPT (because no access to bard :) ) to convert their 180 country names to 3-letter codes and generate a world map showing where it's available: https://twitter.com/thijser/status/1656943947556569090 https://twitter.com/thijser/status/1656943947556569090 Definitely not what I had expected with "180 countries"
- belter 3y agoAlways assumed Canada had a kind of European flavor to it. Thanks Google for confirming it...
- bartislartfast 3y agoWell they do speak French
- aerhardt 3y agoAnd English!
- johannes1234321 3y agoBut (almost) no German. The most spoken (native) language in Europe.
- bartislartfast 3y agowow, I did not know that! other fun fact I learned from wikipedia - "German-Americans make up the largest self-reported ancestry group within the United States accounting for roughly 49 million people and approximately 17% of the population of the US"
- lolinder 3y agoAccording to Wikipedia (and unsurprisingly), that's technically Russian. Western Europe, perhaps? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_speakers_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- twic 3y agoIf someone builds a service on top of Bard (the way Phind is built on top of GPT-4), can they offer that in the EU?
- endisneigh 3y agonothing is stopping them, but they likely wouldn't be in compliance with the law
- thinkingemote 3y agoI had to check and double check but I guess this is one tiny benefit of the UKs withdrawal from the EU I suppose (it's not blocked in the UK). Maybe as similar to cookie controls, we will get fine grained acceptance forms, but what if it's only those in the EU that get that?
- throwaway231124 3y ago[flagged]
- indigomm 3y agoGDPR still applies in the UK. Most EU law was kept intact when the UK left the EU. The only difference is that the UK courts enforce it, and it applies to UK citizens. Maybe the US doesn't care because the UK is a small market now :-)
- sebzim4500 3y agoThe UK does not experience sexual pleasure by fining American companies.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwaway4good 3y agoSo what laws in Canada and the EU that are not on the books in the UK, US, India and Japan prevents Google from rolling this out? Is there actual something substantial or is it performative on Google's part?
- dingledork69 3y ago[flagged]
- mk89 3y agoWhat a great way to compete against chatGPT, which just recently got the OK of the Italian "dept. of privacy". I hope this thing doesn't make it ever to EU.
- can16358p 3y agoEU people should force their governments and regulators to change their stance of overly-strict privacy laws, otherwise the whole world will take off leveraging AI tools whereas EU will not have (legally) access to anything.
- dgellow 3y agoFirst that’s not at all how the EU works. Second, we have access to other services, I don’t really see why we should lower our standard because Google doesn’t want to comply. If they don’t want the EU market, that’s fine.
- is_true 3y agoShhh, let them do it.
- esharte 3y ago"Hacker News is full of libertarians"
- deelly 3y ago1. What about non EU countries, where Bard is blocked too? 2. "Overly-strict privacy laws". Yeah, asking users about consent is definitely overly-strict regulation. 3. There is other AI models that works just fine in EU countries. Wait, am I answering to sarcasm?
- ragebol 3y agoWhy would there need to be this choice between either having privacy OR 'artificial intelligence'? Does AI require invasion of privacy?
- pyrale 3y agoWhy? I'm perfectly happy with the idea that some US tech monopolies think twice about doing their stuff here. That's the law working as intended. And hopefully, that'll give some breathing room for EU companies grow and provide services that respect my rights.
- ipaddr 3y agoExcluding the EU and Canada tell us quickly this is something you want to stay away from. Canada has some of the worst privacy laws if bard is worried about them this might be a sign that your privacy will be violated in ways unseen before. Good luck bard users.. the adults have left the room
- dkarras 3y agoHonestly, blocked countries are not losing out. I can't believe how behind Google is on all this. Bard in its current incarnation is a disaster. Pretty much all replies are hallucinations. Looks like Google really was caught pants down with with ChatGPT.
- TheGigaChad 3y ago[dead]
- r2vcap 3y agoEU citizens, you may be confused that you have been rejected. But isn't that what your government and the bureaucrats in Brussels have brought on themselves? As a Korean citizen, I have no complaints.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ubercow13 3y agoDidn't Korea just pass more data protection laws similar to the GDPR earlier this year?
- Raz2 3y agoImagine someone invents very delicious but carcinogenic sauce. EU will be rejected from its sales too. We just don’t need crap. Sooner or later we will have a similar tool that respects privacy.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoGoogle Bard is blocked in all of continental Europe, EU status notwithstanding. It is also blocked in: - Serbia - Switzerland - Bosnia - North Macedonia - Norway - Ukraine And surely there are a couple of others I'm missing. I struggle to see a reason as to why it's not available in, e.g., Serbia, where their legal risk is surely very low.
- rsynnott 3y agoAll of these besides Norway (Norway is, as an EEA state, subject to the GDPR) and Switzerland (whose relationship to the GDPR would be "it's complicated" on its Facebook page) are EU accession candidate states, so at least in principle should be moving closer to EU law.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- justinclift 3y agoAnd nothing of value was lost. :)
- speedgoose 3y agoI could test palm2 through Google Cloud and I am not impressed. While I haven’t measured I feel that Vicuna13b is better. And chatGPT 4 is in another league.
- crossroadsguy 3y agoToday I noticed there is no way to create a Google account without a creating a Gmail account. I remember it was possible. At least ChatGpt gives an option to sign up with any email.
- tazjin 3y agoI just checked and I see the option to use an existing email address (in Russia). It's available in the account creation form, as an option below the field that asks you what you want your GMail-address to be. Might be A/B-testing though and you're in a group that doesn't have it available at the moment.
- leodriesch 3y agoI’ve also recently been able to create a Google account with my own email domain, from Germany.
- Havoc 3y agoBit strange that uk is included. I was under the impression that there are gdpr like rules prevailing there too despite brexit
- McDev 3y agoThey are. I was going to say the UK's ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) are entirely impotent, however it appears they recently fined TikTok £12.7M for data misuse.
- draw_down 3y ago[dead]
- Havoc 3y agoNot a good sign for Google’s AI endeavours and consumer privacy
- magoghm 3y agoWhen I asked Bard "What do you know about Edgar Allan Poe?" it answered "I'm a text-based AI and can't assist with that." Which I assumed was the result of an overzealous guardrail trying to protect personal private information. And now, when I see that Bard isn't available in the EU I'm starting to wonder if Google included in it's training data something they shouldn't have used.
- olvy0 3y agoI got the same. However when I asked Bard "What is the biography of the poet Edgar Allan Poe?" it gave me a full biography, looking suspiciously like it was cribbed from Wikipedia.
- cma 3y agoSupporting Europe's "right to be forgotten" would require an 8-9 figure retraining run for each request.
- Brulaap 3y agoGoogle Bard? More like Google barred, amiright?
- bitshiftfaced 3y agoMaybe Google sees upcoming AI-related legislation in the EU? It looks better to have not entered a market in the first place than to remove a service later on.
- gigel82 3y agoThe entitlement of some European citizens on this thread is mind boggling. Of course Google will eventually launch Bard in Europe but I really hope they decide not to now :) I remember when GDPR rolled around, our entire company paused all product development for half a year to do "compliance work" that changed absolutely nothing material about the actual privacy approach, just bullshit compliance notices and moving privacy settings around, and rewording options. I have some resentment from that and was surprised by the company not choosing to stop doing business in EU altogether (I wish they did).
- vmilner 3y ago[flagged]
- bastard_op 3y agoWhat their disclaimer ought to say is "Bard is not available in countries that actually have consumer protections against blind data slurping."