Why Meta AI Stays Limited to 22 Countries — Despite Releasing the 405B Llama 3.1 Model
Image Source: Meta Llama 3.1
Meta strengthened its position in the artificial intelligence landscape in 2024 with the release of Llama 3.1, including the flagship 405B-parameter model. These models delivered major improvements in reasoning, multilingual capability, and coding performance, making Meta one of the main competitors to OpenAI and Anthropic. Yet despite the strong interest, Meta’s consumer-facing AI services — the Meta AI assistant and Imagine with Meta — remained available only in certain countries as of August 2024, prompting widespread questions about accessibility.
Why Meta AI Services Weren’t Available Everywhere
As of mid-2024, Meta AI was accessible in countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, Ghana, and several others. The rollout, however, did not extend globally — most notably, it did not include the European Union.
The limitations were driven largely by data-protection concerns, particularly under the EU’s GDPR, rather than by a single approval or licensing process. In June 2024, Meta paused its planned launch in Europe after the Irish Data Protection Commission raised questions about Meta’s proposal to use publicly available user data to train future AI systems. Until those issues were resolved, Meta AI’s assistant and image-generation tools were unavailable to EU users.
It is important to clarify, however, that these restrictions applied to Meta’s AI services, not to Meta’s open models. Businesses and developers in the EU could still access and run the open-source Llama models, including Llama 3.1.
[See our previous report: EU Becomes the First Country to Enact Comprehensive AI Law!]
Llama 3.1 405B: A Model With Global Availability
The Llama 3.1 405B model, announced on 23 July 2024, became one of Meta’s most capable open models. With 405 billion parameters and a 128,000-token context window, it offered exceptional reasoning performance and strong results across multilingual tasks, coding, and tool use.
Unlike the Meta AI assistant, Llama 3.1 itself was not region-locked. Developers worldwide, including in the EU, could download and use the model through platforms such as Hugging Face, NVIDIA, IBM watsonx, and Meta’s own repositories, subject to licensing terms and adequate computing capacity. The availability challenge applied only to Meta’s consumer-facing AI experience, not to the model weights.
[See our previous report: Meta Unleashes Llama 3.1: The Most Powerful AI - And It’s Free?]
Why Users Seek Workarounds
Because Meta AI services offered convenient features — search, chat, reasoning, image creation, and multimodal capabilities — users in unsupported regions often looked for ways to try them. This led to a rise in online tutorials describing how to access Meta AI from countries where the service had not yet launched.
One commonly discussed method is the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which allows users to route their internet traffic through a country where Meta AI is officially available. While doing so can technically make the service accessible, it is important to emphasise that bypassing regional restrictions may violate Meta’s terms of service, and local laws may impose additional constraints depending on jurisdiction.
This makes VPN use a technical workaround, not an officially supported option.
What Users Should Consider Before Using a VPN
For informational purposes, users who explore VPNs typically evaluate options based on:
Connection speed — to support real-time AI interactions
Server locations — particularly in countries where Meta AI is available
Security features — such as encryption, a kill switch, and obfuscation
However, users should be aware of the risks of circumventing regional blocks, including potential account issues or legal considerations. Meta does not endorse access via VPN, and availability may change as Meta expands service coverage or updates its policies.
Will Meta AI Become More Widely Available?
Meta stated in 2024 that it aimed for a broader global rollout once regulatory and data-protection concerns, especially in the EU, were addressed. With major legislative frameworks such as the EU AI Act and GDPR compliance requirements evolving, availability depends on Meta’s ability to align its data-processing practices with regional rules.
In the meantime, while Llama 3.1 remains globally accessible, the Meta AI assistant and Imagine with Meta continue to be officially available only in supported regions.
Source: https://www.unite.ai/accessing-meta-ai-and-llama-3-1-405b-in-restricted-regions-using-a-vpn/
