How many times with large companies have you found that they removed the old opt-out value and put a new one in that is enabled by default because of course it's opt-out?
Opt-out doesn't mean dick when the regulatory environment allows them to do things like the above without any recourse. Of course you can go to any other company that follows the exact same rules if you'd like.
Tbh there is much more regulatory pressure on EU AI companies than US/China - of course you can only use local models which Mistral actually releases unlike the US alternatives.
So out of all the bad options this still seems to be one of the best
I'm curious what regulatory pressure there is on EU AI companies that wouldn't apply to many of the US firms. The AI Act and GDPR still apply to the tech giants since they operate in the EU (e.g. Anthropic watermarking). There are labor laws that are definitely more strict but many of the US firms have operating presence in the EU as well. I imagine that being directly in the EU probably does increase regulatory oversight but I'm curious how this would manifest in Mistral in particular.
Regarding local models, Gemma, GPT-OSS, Nemotron, and Inkling (maybe upcoming Muse series as well) all are fairly decent options at a variety of hardware costs.
These laws apply to US companies in a more limited way because if we fine them too much they complain to US government that other countries have laws they have to follow. And then the US government intervenes to protect their money and data/intelligence extraction machinery (big tech companies). Usually with at least partial success.