Brussels orders Google to share Android's AI sandbox with the other kids
DMA enforcers want rival assistants to get same deep device access as Gemini
Those pencil pushers at the European Commission are drawing up measures to ensure Google opens up its Android smartphone platform to something few users asked for – competing AI services.
Landing on Google's desk are proposed measures the Chocolate Factory may have to implement, aimed at ensuring third parties get effective access to key Android capabilities. This includes the ability for rival AI services to interact with applications and execute tasks on user devices just as easily as Google's own.
The Commission sent its preliminary findings to Google as part of the proceedings it started under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) back in January. One covered Android interoperability obligations with third-party developers; a second concerned access to key data held by Google Search.
Currently, the Commission claims, capabilities like sending an email, ordering food or sharing a photo are largely reserved for Google's own AI offerings on Android. It wants a facility for rival AI services to be easily activated by users via a custom "wake word" (or "woke word," if you're American), and for competing providers to offer deeply integrated experiences alongside native tools like Gemini.
As is customary, the Commission is putting its proposed measures out for a public consultation, and inviting comment from interested parties until May 13.
Teresa Ribera, the Commission's first EVP for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, argued that AI services are increasingly how EU citizens interact with their phones, making it critical to protect innovation across companies of all sizes.
"Today's proposed measures will give more choice to Android users about the AI services they use and integrate in their phone, including from the vast range of AI services that compete with Google's own AI," she said.
Unsurprisingly, Google disagrees, arguing the AI market is already highly competitive and that Android is interoperable by design.
"Android's open ecosystem enables AI assistants to thrive, as device makers have full autonomy to integrate and customise the AI experiences their users want," Google senior competition counsel Clare Kelly said in a statement sent to The Register.
"This unwarranted intervention would strip away that autonomy, mandate access to sensitive hardware and device permissions; unnecessarily driving up costs while undermining critical privacy and security protections for European users," she added.
Mountain View's position is that this is regulatory overreach which could leave European Android devices lacking functionality and security versus those elsewhere. But if Android is truly open by design, as Google insists, what harm could mandating openness possibly do? ®