Facebook opens artificial intelligence lab in Paris

Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook has opened an artificial intelligence lab in its Paris office, strengthening its foothold in Europe as scrutiny of the giant social network intensifies there.

The team is on board starting today.

"We chose Paris for this expansion because France is home to some of the best researchers in the world," the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said in a statement.

Not only will Facebook work with a team of researchers in Paris, it says it plans to "work openly with and invest in the AI research community in France, the EU, and beyond as we strive to make meaningful progress in these fields."

For about a year, Facebook has been building a program called Facebook AI Research to invest heavily in artificial intelligence to help it sift through the flood of text, pictures and videos on the service. It has artificial intelligence research teams in Menlo Park and in New York.

"It's our hope that this research will ultimately help us make services like News Feed, photos and search even better and enable an entirely new set of ways to connect and share," the company said.

Google for years has directed huge resources to artificial intelligence. At its annual developers conference I/O last week, the Internet giant showed off a new digital assistant called Now on Tap.

And like Google, Facebook has drawn the attention of regulators in the European Union, particularly for how it collects and handles users' data. Regulators in France, Germany and Belgium are investigating whether Facebook violated a new privacy policy enacted this year.

More than 1.4 billion people use Facebook and hundreds of millions more rely on its messaging services Whats App and Facebook Messenger and its photo-sharing service Instagram.

The company has more users in Europe than in the United States, according to research firm eMarketer. It nearly doubled its European users since 2010.