Apple blames DMA for delaying Siri AI in Europe. The EU says nothing is stopping Apple from launching it.

Archived version

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Jan Penfrat, a senior policy adviser for European Digital Rights (EDRi) … sees Apple’s latest moves as a means of putting pressure on the EU Commission to allow it to break the DMA. “It’s very much a lobbying tactic,” he said. “The problem is not the DMA but Apple refusing to open up its competition-busting software ecosystem.”

For Michael Veale, a professor of technology law and policy at University College London, the core issue is that Apple is making an exception to its own long-standing privacy and security setup “in order to stay relevant and in the game” when it comes to AI. “Apple’s privacy and security model is built like a Jenga tower, based on extreme vertical control by the firm, and risks collapsing when interoperability is introduced.” In other words: Apple’s comfortable altering its own practices for Siri AI, giving the AI the ability to access lots of data across different apps, but argues the same kind of access is too dangerous when competitors ask for it.

Veale and Penfrat both said there’s no way to properly assess Apple’s proposed solution because the company has not made it public. Other experts, such as [the professor of competition law and digital regulation at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, Friso] Bostoen, questioned why Apple needs as long as 18 months to implement it, given the interoperability requirements were predictable and should have been addressed in parallel with the development of Siri AI.

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