The European Union is skeptical about Apple’s justification for its delayed rollout of its revamped voice assistant and demands that it be its responsibility to keep products in line with EU law.
The controversy comes after Apple announced a big artificial intelligence upgrade to its devices, which includes its retooled Siri system. The new version of the assistant, dubbed Siri AI, is designed to handle more natural speech, use its knowledge to communicate with other apps like Maps and Mail, and more advanced tasks for its users.
In its announcement, Apple said the new features would not be available in the European Union (EU) as a result of regulatory restrictions under the bloc’s digital competition legislation, the Digital Markets Act.
But the European Commission was not convinced. Thomas Regnier, who is the digital affairs spokesperson for the Commission, said that the decision not to offer Siri AI in Europe was up to Apple. He said that there are no rules that stop companies from offering new services in the EU market.
Known as the Digital Markets Act, the rules mandate that major tech platforms make their services compatible with those of other firms. The goal is to ensure that no single company can limit access to other technologies and competition between digital ecosystems is fair.
Apple has not been able to create interoperability solutions that meet the EU’s standards for privacy and security, Regnier said. The company has also asked to be exempted from these obligations, but the European Commission did not accept their request, he added.
Such an exemption would jeopardize providing Apple’s own AI services an unfair advantage over competing AI systems, the Commission said. It could hamper competition by making it more difficult for other AI assistants to be visible or adopted by Apple users, officials said.
Apple has not yet responded in detail, publicly, to the Commission’s latest comments. The company has previously, though, contended that EU regulations hinder product development and prevent the launch of new features in the region. It has also been critical of the Digital Markets Act in the past and has demanded that some changes be made in its framework.
The dispute underlines existing friction between Brussels and big U.S. tech giants regarding the regulation of digital markets. European policy makers have said that they need strict regulations to ensure competition and users have choice, while businesses such as Apple say that strict regulations could hinder innovation and add to the technical complexity.
It is not the first time that Apple has been in hot water with EU regulators. European authorities have always disputed the company’s claim that it is held back by regulations from offering certain services and features in Europe.
Both sides seem poised to fight more battles over innovation versus regulation in the one of the world’s most regulated digital markets as AI gets more embedded in consumer devices.