Apple blames DMA for delaying Siri AI in Europe. The EU says nothing is stopping Apple from launching it.
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Jan Penfrat, a senior policy adviser for European Digital Rights (EDRi) ... sees Appleโs latest moves as a means of putting pressure on the EU Commission to allow it to break the DMA. โItโs very much a lobbying tactic,โ he said. โThe problem is not the DMA but Apple refusing to open up its competition-busting software ecosystem.โ
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 โin order to stay relevant and in the gameโ when it comes to AI. โAppleโs 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.โ In other words: Appleโs 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 thereโs no way to properly assess Appleโs 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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This is probably the best outcome for everyone, including Apple.
So they have Siri AI which you can give extensive access to your private information, presumably so it can help you better. It is reasonable to assume you trust Apple to some extent already, since you use their product. And if not, you can just disallow access using their privacy infrastructure which you probably trust because otherwise you wouldn't entrust the device with anything valuable in the first place.
But now the EU comes along and says, if you can have this privileged position, you need to give it to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk too so we can have some fair competition. Meanwhile Apple thinks, "I made this feature to sell more devices, I actually don't care much if the user really uses it so no skin off my back if it's disabled, and I can make sure that my prompts don't employ any dark patterns because that undermines my whole PRiVaCY angle to why iPhone is superior, however I cannot really ensure that Meta and Grok won't lie to and threaten the user until they give up and give them their private data which is all these companies are really interested in."
So now Apple can point to the DMA and say "we do this because privacy is the most important thing everrr", the EU can point to this and say "we do this because fair competition is what we're about", and EU citizens don't get their arms twisted into exposing everything about themselves. And even if you're immune, your social graph by and large isn't.
Getting some freedoms means that someone will try to exploit your ability to exercise them. If you can plausibly show that you have no control, you win the game of Chicken, like a driver who throws out their steering wheel, visibly, before accelerating towards their opponent.