[IshKebab]

Why couldn't they distribute it? They clearly could have. There's no law against it.

Perhaps you meant that they were nervous about companies using it commercially and either bringing them bad press or making money off their work? That's clearly why they only released it for researchers.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Why couldn't they distribute it?

No legal issues per se. Hence the political qualifier. See: https://www.menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_meta...

[elcomet]

It was trained on data they don't own. They could face a lawsuit for this, like it has happened for image generation models.