Apple : Apple today introduced Siri AI, an entirely new version of Siri, powered by Apple Intelligence. Unfortunately, due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple will not be able to ship Siri AI in the European Union with the release of iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. Over the past several months, EU regulators did not accept any of Apple’s proposed solutions to bring Siri AI to the EU while safely supporting other virtual assistants. Thomas Regnier , a European Commission spokesperson, responded during a press conference: We had a few contacts with Apple on this matter, this I can confirm. But Apple was simply unable to develop interoperability solutions that meet essential E.U. privacy and security standards. Instead of trying to find a suitable compliance solution, Apple simply made a request to the European Commission to be exempted from their interoperability obligations under the DMA — and this for at least 18 months on top of it. Guess what? That’s not an option. Because it would mean that no A.I. agent other than Siri A.I. — by the way, powered by Google — would have an equal chance to be chosen by iPhone users. It is refreshing to see Apple and the European Commission arguing in public and on the record instead of by leaking information to the Financial Times . Nicolas Lellouche , of Numerama , spoke with Greg Joswiak about this (machine translated; original in French): To work, Siri AI builds a semantic index of all your communications and data so that you can find them when you ask them a question. Apple suggests that advertisers will use AI to retrieve this data if Europe forces it to open its accesses: its system is totally incompatible with European requests. A third party could “read all your messages, edit your files, delete things, delete your photos, take actions in your applications without you knowing or consenting,” lists Greg Joswiak. Apple and the European Commission each cite privacy and security concerns as justification for their competing arguments. This is a little study in clashing definitions, but it rings a little hollow. To the extent Apple has concerns about third-party A.I. access, it will still launch Siri A.I. on MacOS, which remains a relatively unrestricted system where, I hear, dozens of third-party apps may already exist. A.I. assistants operating in this environment certainly have security and privacy risks, and the Commission maintains it should be a user’s choice about whether to assume those risks while government should regulate specific and egregious problems. In its press release, Apple says its proposal for iOS and iPadOS involved the introduction of a “Trusted System Agent — an intermediary that would allow virtual assistants to safely access the same features and capabilities as Siri A.I. for devices in the E.U.”, which Apple says it would have been able to release in the next year-and-a-half. This is the “exemption” Regnier is referring to. According to Lellouche, Apple claims “none of its engineers are currently working on solutions to open Siri AI to the competition”, so perhaps the Trusted System Agent proposal goes nowhere, or maybe it will re-emerge in late 2027. Given Apple’s self-imposed problems with Apple Intelligence since WWDC 2024, I question whether many people in Europe will find this particularly disruptive or upsetting, however. ⌥ Permalink