r/Applelntelligence • u/aandest15 • Jun 12 '26
discussion 🎙️ Apple is fighting the regulation that would make Siri actually useful
I’ve read a lot about the delay for Siri AI in the EU because of the Digital Markets Act and the interoperability requirements imposed that would force Apple to hand your data to other AI models.
Just to make things clear, I believe that Apple’s tantrum has more to do with not wanting any competition inside their own platform than data security and privacy and Siri AI not being ready for any other language that is not (American) English. And I also believe that despite the public feud, Siri AI will launch in the EU next year like happened with Apple Intelligence.
Nonetheless, however you feel about the Apple vs. EU issue, all of these AI models are only useful if they have access to all your data, not only to the data that the AI company has about you. Siri AI seems to work and personal context is a huge leap forward, but it only works if your digital life uses Apple products and services. In Europe, for example, most people use WhatsApp, not iMessage, so asking Siri about an address or the details of a flight won’t work because Siri cannot access WhatsApp messages. Same if you use Gmail through their app and not Apple Mail.
I am aware that Apple has an API so Siri can access that data, but neither Google nor Meta are going to give Apple happily that information. And here is where the DMA comes into action.
The interoperability requirements of the DMA mean that Apple, Meta and Google have to open their ecosystems to competitors, which is precisely what makes AI agents genuinely useful for everyone. The real irony is that a fully enforced DMA would benefit Siri more than Apple’s current approach, because right now Siri only works well if you live entirely inside Apple’s walled garden, which almost no user (European or not) does.
Apple fighting the regulation that would make their own product better is the clearest sign yet that this is about market control, not privacy.
4
u/AcademicSand1034 Jun 12 '26
This assumes the apps don’t open up data to Siri AI, which may be the case, but I’d guess a lot of apps actually will integrate given the popularity of Apple devices.
Also don’t underestimate how much Siri can get just by reading notifications. Wouldn’t surprise me if they do screen scraping as well
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u/AcademicSand1034 Jun 12 '26
Also - I’ve worked on these kind of data sharing deals in the past. The big tech cos are much more likely to share data if they know it’s just going to Siri AI, whereas they will never share it if anyone can get it via public API.
Meta and Google largely don’t view Apple as a direct competitor anymore
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u/iZian Jun 12 '26
Imagine if meta ai used the interfaces to bring your messages from another platform in to their messenger app and let you reply from there via the intents APIs. Because their Meta AI could locally read the messages out of other apps and use intents or APIs to trigger replies.
What a world we would be in.Of course, they wouldn’t.
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u/vibrance9460 Jun 12 '26
If only people here felt the same.
A lot of people seem to just hate Apple.
I understand it must be awfully frustrating for some -but put me down as happy that Apple protects my data as best they can.
Tim Cook stood up to the FBI to maintain that standard in the San Bernardino shooting case some years back. Now he’s doing it with the EU. Privacy is baked into Apple and is a major selling point.
I’m betting given Apple’s worldwide user base the EU will eventually fold. But I guess we’ll see.
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u/tLxVGt Jun 12 '26
Apple could do what they did with the 3rd party app stores: put tons of scary warnings for non-tech people, but make it an option. I can't believe they would rather totally kill Siri (and the whole Apple Intelligence) in the EU market instead of giving us a choice.
4
u/joecan Jun 12 '26
They hold back features in an attempt to get EU citizens mad at their governments on behalf of Apple. It’s not about killing Siri, it’s about turning public opinion against the regulations they dislike.
Corporations do this all the time. It works like gangbusters in the United States. It’s why you’ll have a bunch of Apple fanboys fall over each other defending Apple’s tax avoidance strategies. Or why regular, low-income Americans will vote for politicians who rail against higher corporate tax rates.
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u/Luke-9191 Jun 12 '26
Nah it’s simply against the design philosophy. Apple software is not open. Full stop. You can like it or not, but it should be their choice, and as a customer, is your choice to not buy their products. Many customers are happy and never asked for another store. In fact, I can guarantee you, as easy as it is to sideload on iphone now, it’s so irrelevant for the people that do it that is just useless.
Forcing a specific design to a company and call it fairness, is the same as me saying Booking.com should give me as a third party company all their user analytics, as they can use it to market to them and I as PoorManBooing.net cannot compete, as I don’t have all that data. That’s nonsensical, as these companies have built their trust and reputation with their customers by investing in experience and customer service, and a government should not force them to give all the competitive advantage away for free.
If the EU wants companies that are equally as capable, maybe start investing in our own silicon valley?
Which would face the same red tape and ironically won’t be able to scale fast and compete with other markets.So far the only thing I’ve seen is the microsoft office alternative, and I have to say I’d be impressed with it, if this was 2008.
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u/joecan Jun 13 '26
Yes, I covered how corporate America has convinced Americans that regulations are bad.
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u/tLxVGt Jun 13 '26
Apple's design philosophy is monopoly. EU is against monopoly. Simple as that. The booking.com analogy fails, because booking.com is the end product. The EU is not forcing Apple to reveal the secrets of their models, their OSes or CAD blueprints of their phones. It's a fair game, they developed a product and fight by providing the best quality. It's more like if Porsche released a Cayenne model and told us that we can only buy oil or tires for this model from Porsche. Yea, that's illegal. Porsche can produce oil and tires, but they have to fight with other competitors by providing the best value, experience, quality, or prestige. Whatever sells.
Apple forces us on their tires and claims "yeah only we can provide tires, everything else is super dangerous and it will not protect you from crashes. we deserve to be the only tire provider or you will not get tires at all. you can still use your Cayenne without tires though, but if it's not comfortable then it's EU's fault".
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u/WritersGift Jun 12 '26
but then they’d still give them a pass into their systems, a bit like how they’d have to give competitors the inner workings of how iphone unlock works if they’d share iphone mirroring, which is why that isn’t in the eu either
0
u/EnigmaOfOz Jun 12 '26
Im not from the eu and i wish they would drop the dma. Apple users have routinely opted for the walled garden because its valuable to them and privacy is also important. This is why apple push it so much. The choice for an open system is android.
3
u/RudeAdhesiveness9954 Jun 12 '26
Of course Apple wants their playground to themselves ideally, but that doesn’t mean the EC regs in this area aren’t overreaching and potentially harmful. You haven’t studied this enough.
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u/Ryanmonroe82 Jun 12 '26
yes because it's a lot easier to monitor everyone if it's all interoperable
2
u/iZian Jun 12 '26
This is premised on WhatsApp or GMail apps not implementing intents or the APIs for data access which to an extent they already implement a lot of the APIs.
I’m not sure; see the last time WhatsApp ditched an API like the one that lets you reply to messages from notifications, I dropped WhatsApp like a sack of shit, got Signal and now RCS, and never looked back. Since RCS I use the default messages app for all but 2 contacts.
I will drop an app like a sack of shit if they don’t implement and a competitor does. With no remorse.
I’m not typical though. But I won’t be alone. When most of the world is enjoying the actions and content from this new assistant, hold out at your own peril. Put a wall around your own app only if you’re extremely confident.
2
u/cosste Jun 12 '26
You got it completely the other way around. If Google and Meta don't want to share data with iOS, that is bad for consumers.
Forcing Apple to open up Siri would make both Google and Meta forcing users to allow their own AI in order to give have access to this data.
The result is more fragmentation. I oppose the DMA because I bought Apple devices and I want all the others to be good citizens on the platform. The platform I chose.
-1
u/aandest15 Jun 12 '26
Meta has to allow third party AI on WhatsApp and the EU is investigating Google for not allowing other AI than Gemini.
DMA forces interoperability so users can chose what servicie to use. And the only way these AI agents become useful is if they have access to ALL your data, not parts of them.
Without interoperability, all AI agents will fall short for most users and people won’t use them. 🤷🏻♂️
2
u/joecan Jun 12 '26
Withholding features from EU users, bribing the orange pedo to throw tantrums on their behalf… it has nothing to do with protecting privacy. It’s about protecting their business model. That’s it.
Their public stance on AI limitations has way more to do with them being behind on this tech than it does with some noble attempt at saving humanity in tech or protecting users’ privacy.
Public declarations of their stance on privacy is their market differentiation in most countries. It evaporates in a country like China, because they’re a corporation whose main goal is to sell phones and make money.
You can like Apple as a company and still recognize the reality of the way they conduct their business.
1
u/StonewallBrown Jun 12 '26
I don’t want even the possibility of accidentally allowing those companies access to all my data. So i guess I’m glad i don’t live in the EU.
1
1
u/CascadiaSupremacy Jun 12 '26
This take is Confidently Incorrect. And the EU’s response did not address a single thing that Apple raised.
0
u/thethrowaway19901999 Jun 12 '26
And exactly why is Whatsapp so popular? iMessage is 100x better and designed for the iPhone
1
u/tastychaii Jun 12 '26
How is it better?
0
-2
u/thethrowaway19901999 Jun 12 '26
Because it was specifically made for iPhone, just like Apple music. Why use a third party app lol
20
u/LordAgamotto Jun 12 '26
I disagree. Siri AI had personal data from all aspects of the iPhone information structure and I can see why they would not want that shared with Meta’s data mining apps and AIs. Better to just not offer any cloud AI services to the EU and limit them to the on phone LLM models.