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

reuters.com

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

#191

Post by seydor »

afavour wrote: post #2

Apple said "hey, can we not comply with the law", the EU said no, so it didn't launch. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I can see why Apple might want to request an 18 month exemption, there's clearly extra work required to comply with EU regulations. But on the other hand it also feels like a straightforward play for consumer sympathy: let them get used to using it every day for 18 months, then pressure the EU to…

In the end Apple is a business and the EU is a dwindling market, they have to choose smart.

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

#192

Post by JumpCrisscross »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #187
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one of the world’s wealthiest companies can spare the resources needed to comply with the regulations of one of the world’s largest markets At what cost? This is Apple’s second bite at AI. Giannandrea fucked up the first time. I’m honestly with Cupertino on not over complicating it the second time around. If they found the right mix of features and architecture, great, then work to port it to high-bar jurisdictions…

> At what cost? This is Apple’s second bite at AI. Giannandrea fucked up the first time. I’m honestly with Cupertino on not over complicating it the second time around. If they found the right mix of features and architecture, great, then work to port it to high-bar jurisdictions. I totally agree with you in principle here, but Apple have a pretty large vested interest in not supporting interoperability here (and in…

> purely a lobbying move

It can be more than one thing. It’s a lobbying move, to be sure. But it’s also almost certainly a time-to-market and potentially cost-mitigation play, too.

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

#193

Post by gmueckl »

kube-system wrote: post #65
gmueckl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwing infinite money at engineering problems doesn't move deadlines arbitrarily. But Apple's position here is actually really wild: Apple claims to protect user privacy all the time. But they can't offer a product in a major jurisdiction that has actually meaningful privacy laws? Didn't they consider that while designing the product? This is quite the contradiction.

The exemption Apple wanted was not from a privacy law, but from the DMA. They never claimed to have an issue meeting their privacy laws when using their own product, it was other people's products that they said they couldn't guarantee the privacy of. Here's their argument in their own words: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/due-to-dma-siri-ai-de...

That's even worse, then. They are not responsible for other companies' products. So this is just another piece of anti-DMA propaganda then. They have been fighting it loudly and with toddler-level arguments since they became subject to it.

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

#194

Post by jasonmp85 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #93
afavour wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me that reads as an even greater reason not to delay it. If you knew the restrictions day one you’d be able to engineer the system to accommodate them. Waiting until post launch now means a massive amount of re-engineering. I know it’s not quite as simple as that but I do think it shows Apple are more interested in blaming the EU than reducing the potential issues ahead of time.

> If you knew the restrictions day one you’d be able to engineer the system to accommodate them This slows down deploying the system globally. Particularly if the target is moving, it may make sense to build lightly so one can pivot, and then build in the compliance stuff after you know you have a winning configuration. The EU has its laws. Apple has its strategy. The only thing I fault anyone on is the public bicker…

[dead]

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

#195

Post by hellisothers »

callc wrote: post #145
nsikorr wrote: post #30

Good for the total of eight users that will then use an alternative agent once it landed. Similar to the twelve people that use alternative app stores.

Why make fun of freedom? Have some dignity. We all deserve the right to fully own our general compute devices.

I’ll bite, why do you deserve this “right”?

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

#196

Post by greatgib »

eykanal wrote: post #38
afavour wrote: post #2

Apple said "hey, can we not comply with the law", the EU said no, so it didn't launch. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I can see why Apple might want to request an 18 month exemption, there's clearly extra work required to comply with EU regulations. But on the other hand it also feels like a straightforward play for consumer sympathy: let them get used to using it every day for 18 months, then pressure the EU to…

Google eng mgr here. I've worked on a few projects related to compliance with various government policies. This isn't "assign a two-pizza team to it, will be done in a quarter"; these types of compliance efforts can mean completely redoing multiple core systems to handle privacy, wipeout, audit, reporting, per-location policies, etc etc. These efforts can involve hundreds to thousands of people for multiple years. Su…

The truth is very often that it is long and hard not to do the work to comply but how to not comply or do complicated things to abuse of loophole despite being able to pass the law on the letter of it.

Especially in the case of apple or Google. Look at the app store situation. It is very straightforward to do the work for the whole thing to be open to any competitor. But it is hard to try to design and implement a solution to try to not break any regulations but still manage to keep users captive the maximum without having competitor entering our walled garden.

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

#197

Post by MBCook »

afavour wrote: post #61
eykanal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google eng mgr here. I've worked on a few projects related to compliance with various government policies. This isn't "assign a two-pizza team to it, will be done in a quarter"; these types of compliance efforts can mean completely redoing multiple core systems to handle privacy, wipeout, audit, reporting, per-location policies, etc etc. These efforts can involve hundreds to thousands of people for multiple years. Su…

To me that reads as an even greater reason not to delay it. If you knew the restrictions day one you’d be able to engineer the system to accommodate them. Waiting until post launch now means a massive amount of re-engineering. I know it’s not quite as simple as that but I do think it shows Apple are more interested in blaming the EU than reducing the potential issues ahead of time.

Don’t forget they’re already basically two years behind when they originally promised this stuff.

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

#198

Post by JumpCrisscross »

simjnd wrote: post #185
jandrewrogers wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technical problem is nothing like exchanging data with fitness trackers. One of the issues here is that there are many people with strong opinions that don't understand the thing they have strong opinions about. Which is the normal state of human affairs.

Indeed but you ignore my second paragraph: they have developed (and 3rd-party audited) a way to handoff all the data (parts of your Personal Context, etc.) to their cloud servers in a privacy preserving way on-device. Why couldn't the same process could be used to handoff the data to a 3rd-party AI provider? (genuine why, if you have an understanding of the thing you have a strong opinion about I'd genuinely apprecia…

> Why couldn't the same process could be used to handoff the data to a 3rd-party AI provider?

You have more safeguards if it’s running on your own metal. It’s reasonable to want to understand that better, perhaps with your own red team, before opening up customer data to actual potential hostiles.

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

#199

Post by theshrike79 »

simjnd wrote: post #185
jandrewrogers wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technical problem is nothing like exchanging data with fitness trackers. One of the issues here is that there are many people with strong opinions that don't understand the thing they have strong opinions about. Which is the normal state of human affairs.

Indeed but you ignore my second paragraph: they have developed (and 3rd-party audited) a way to handoff all the data (parts of your Personal Context, etc.) to their cloud servers in a privacy preserving way on-device. Why couldn't the same process could be used to handoff the data to a 3rd-party AI provider? (genuine why, if you have an understanding of the thing you have a strong opinion about I'd genuinely apprecia…

Apple PCC is using completely mad and paranoid amounts of security down to hardware and firmware level making sure nobody at any point of the supply chain can access the data.

EU can’t and won’t enforce the same rigour for 3rd party cloud AI. Which is the problem for Apple.

If said 3rd party service leaks private data, guess which company is going to be in the BIG HEADLINE and which one will hardly be mentioned in the news?

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

#200

Post by dylan604 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #93
afavour wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me that reads as an even greater reason not to delay it. If you knew the restrictions day one you’d be able to engineer the system to accommodate them. Waiting until post launch now means a massive amount of re-engineering. I know it’s not quite as simple as that but I do think it shows Apple are more interested in blaming the EU than reducing the potential issues ahead of time.

> If you knew the restrictions day one you’d be able to engineer the system to accommodate them This slows down deploying the system globally. Particularly if the target is moving, it may make sense to build lightly so one can pivot, and then build in the compliance stuff after you know you have a winning configuration. The EU has its laws. Apple has its strategy. The only thing I fault anyone on is the public bicker…

If Apple is so pro-privacy like they claim, then they'd look for the most strict international privacy laws and abide by them. Then they could feel safe in knowing they could release the product anywhere. The fact they want to make the product available under the "rules" of the least privacy protecting countries first says a lot to me
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