Is Regulation Holding Back Tech in the EU?

Two years after unveiling Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, Apple’s most wanted AI feature – a smarter and more capable version of its digital assistant Siri – is finally around the corner. Unless you live in the EU, that is.

On Monday, Apple officially announced Siri AI, an “entirely new version of Siri,” which Apple describes as “profoundly more capable and personal.” Originally planned to be launched alongside Apple Intelligence in late 2024, the AI-powered Siri was marred with problems, delayed several times and ultimately rebuilt from the ground up. The new Siri will be available as a beta to English-language users later this year, with one notable exception: the European Union.

As Apple announced in a separate press release, Siri AI will not be coming to the EU for the foreseeable future due to the Digital Markets Act’s interoperability rules, which would require Apple to grant other virtual assistants a degree of system-level access, which the company deems unsafe and unacceptable. It’s not the first time that Apple has held back a release in the EU to ensure compliance with EU rules and, judging by the strongly worded press release, the company is not happy about it.

The first suite of Apple Intelligence features, released in the U.S. in late 2024, was also delayed several months in the EU and other companies have encountered similar problems when trying to comply with EU laws. Back in 2023, when Meta launched Threads, a text-based social media app linked with Instagram, the EU was also excluded due to GDPR and DMA-related concerns. Back then, it was impossible to sign up to Threads without linking an Instagram account, a practice likely non-compliant with EU rules. It took several months for those issues to be resolved and, when Threads finally launched in the EU in December 2023, users had the option to create an account from scratch.

In recent years, the EU has made a name for itself by repeatedly going toe-to-toe with U.S. tech on issues ranging from tax evasion to privacy laws and antitrust rules. And while this shows that even the most powerful companies in the world must comply with the rules, it has also created a situation where EU users are left behind increasingly often when it comes to the latest tech or digital services. This could create backlash against regulation, which is why it’s important that the EU demonstrates its will to cooperate with tech companies to find solutions, as it has in the past.