Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Legal framing and Apple’s decision

  • Commenters largely agree on the sequence: Apple asked for a temporary DMA exemption (~18 months), EU refused, Apple chose not to launch Siri AI / Apple Intelligence in the EU.
  • Many frame this as “law is the law”: if a product can’t comply, the correct response is not to ship it, not to demand special treatment.
  • Several see Apple’s public messaging as a pressure tactic: blame EU so EU citizens lobby to loosen rules.

DMA vs privacy: competition law dressed as privacy dispute

  • Multiple comments stress this is about the Digital Markets Act (DMA), an interoperability/competition framework, not GDPR or “EU privacy law.”
  • The DMA aim described: prevent gatekeepers (Apple, Google, etc.) from giving their own services privileged OS access and locking out competitors.
  • Apple’s stated line (per discussion): opening Siri AI’s deep device access to third-party agents can’t yet be done in a privacy‑preserving way; thus it sought delay.

Interoperability vs privacy and security

  • EU side (as described by commenters): third‑party AI assistants should be able to do what Siri AI can, with user consent, just like default browsers or messaging apps.
  • Apple/defensive side: giving any third‑party agent access to messages, photos, screen contents, etc. is a huge privacy and security risk, especially with ad‑driven firms; Apple would take the reputational hit for others’ breaches.
  • Critics counter that:
    • Users already grant powerful permissions to apps; a permissioned API, warnings, and audits could manage risk.
    • Third‑party AIs serving EU users must comply with GDPR anyway.
    • Apple already designed Private Cloud Compute and could, in principle, require similar standards from others.
  • Some note Apple proposed a “Trusted System Agent” intermediary and phased rollout; thread reports the Commission rejected this, but details are unclear.

Apple’s privacy posture and motives

  • Supportive view: Apple is one of the few large vendors pushing on‑device processing and hardened cloud inference; DMA effectively forces them to weaken their own model by letting in less trustworthy actors.
  • Skeptical view: Apple’s privacy is partly marketing; examples cited include non‑E2EE iCloud backups by default and ad business growth. Privacy is seen as a pretext to preserve lock‑in and services revenue.

Engineering and timing

  • Big‑tech engineers in the thread describe DMA‑grade compliance and per‑region behavior as multi‑year, multi‑hundred‑person efforts; not easily “fixed with money.”
  • Others argue DMA has been known for years; not designing for it from day one shows Apple bet on avoiding or blunting the rules, and is now late.

Impact on EU users and ecosystem

  • Some EU commenters are content to forego Siri AI to uphold competition and user choice; others resent being feature‑lagged and Apple’s framing that “EU won’t let us ship.”
  • A recurring split: one camp sees DMA as necessary to break duopoly power; another sees it as heavy‑handed regulation that will slow or divert innovation away from Europe.