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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

#61

Post by afavour »

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…

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.

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

#63

Post by doctorpangloss »

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.

it's still being litigated wrt to alternative app stores: https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/04/epic-games-asks-u-s-supreme-c...

the core technology fee is a big obstacle to alternative app stores.

openclaw is massively popular. there is a lot of diversity in "persona" agents, which are different than coding agents or the agent apple demoed. they're not all the same.

i don't know, i don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.

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

#64

Post by lotsofpulp »

gmueckl wrote: post #35
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…

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.

Protecting user privacy and reducing surface area for litigation against the business can happen simultaneously. Not that it is, but just saying, politics and difficult to define thresholds muddy the waters.

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

#65

Post by kube-system »

gmueckl wrote: post #35
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…

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...

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

#66

Post by ivan_gammel »

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…

Privacy by design isn‘t enormous effort, as every European engineering manager will tell you. It‘s just another reasonable and straightforward set of requirements. Of course, if you want to have privacy-less features in jurisdictions permitting it, that‘s a different story and that‘s a choice.

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

#67

Post by y1n0 »

esperent wrote: post #19
woah wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the issue was that the EU wanted Apple to open up their new AI agent interface (the ability to control every app on your phone so Siri can call you an Uber or whatever), and Apple thought that it was too risky of a capability to give to any random AI app right out of the gate.

> Apple thought that it was too risky of a capability to give to any random AI app right out of the gate Oh come on. Apple doesn't want to give up control. That's what this is about. The privacy thing is just to make them look good

Nothing you wrote is in disagreement with the parent.

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

#68

Post by m3kw9 »

McDyver wrote: post #48
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…

It goes to show that privacy is not a priority. And it should be.

EU privacy laws are not there to protect your privacy, its there because the law makers don't know how modern privacy works and wants their name on the law so it seems they did something.

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

#69

Post by gmueckl »

bnj wrote: post #27
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…

As I follow the situation, it seems that regulatory uncertainty is a major issue though- the EU’s requirements are framed in terms of outcomes sought, rather than in terms that can be quantitatively shown as met or broken. So it’s not a matter of dedicating a team to meet a list of requirements, but instead navigating the worst case scenario of enforcement if post-launch the EU determines that the proscribed outcomes…

A lot of regulation is legally defined in terms of outcomes. That in itself isn't unusual. Checklists of technical requirements are almowt always a derivative and a suggestion about a safe path to meet the regulated outcome. This is how "blessed" standards for e.g. medical devices work. This shields the laws themselves from overly technical discussions.

The only difference that I can see here is that the standards layer hasn't solidified yet.

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

#70

Post by crimsontech »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #6
graphime wrote: post #3

Good. EU has the right to privacy. Apple also has the right to not conduct business in EU. If EU doesn’t like it, they can build their own sovereign software.

This doesn't have anything to do with privacy. The DMA mandates that Apple allows for competition, which (if you believe in capitalism) is good for the market overall. It's essential to stop big tech from abusing their market dominance. However Apple would prefer to not allow competition for their digital products on any of their hardware.

Siri AI has the capability to read your screen and access a lot of personal stuff. I don't blame Apple for not wanting to open this up to allow any model to access it. It seems Apple proposed a number of solutions which were denied.

While I can appreciate the reason for the DMA, people don't have to buy Apple devices, they can buy any type of phone they want and just use the ecosystems provided by these phones.

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