“Europe has become less competitive and less innovative compared to other regions and it now risks falling further behind in the AI era due to inconsistent regulatory decision making,” the letter said.

Multimodal AI models appear to be another area of concern. The advanced models represent the next significant step in AI -- capable of improving productivity and scientific research.

As the online media publication Pymnts points out, the letter compares a change from "text-only models to multimodal models as akin to the difference between operating with one sense versus five. By harnessing these frontier AI technologies, Europe could add hundreds of billions of euros to its economy."

The letter goes on to outline concerns around data. The biggest concern involves the uncertainty around the type of data that companies can use to train AI models based on rules set down by the European Data Protection Authorities, and whether companies can use Europe-specific language Models (LLMs) to train them.

The letter also points out that "…we need harmonised, consistent, quick and clear decisions under EU data regulations that enable European data to be used in AI training for the benefit of Europeans," and adds that "decisive action is needed to help unlock the creativity, ingenuity and entrepreneurialism that will ensure Europe's prosperity, growth and technical leadership.”

Data -- or lack of data -- becomes the challenge in Europe as it attempts to balance consumer protection with technology advancements that could hold back innovation.