Companies must ensure people know when they are interacting with artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look real
From apparently conspiring to steal elections to abusing staff or performing embarrassing dance moves, the last few years have seen plenty of fake content made about politicians intended to malign its targets and mislead the public.
Now EU rules aim to stem the flood of this deceptive content: starting from Sunday, artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look authentic must be labelled.
The Guardian journalist who targeted the Free Speech Union with a story stuffed with misinformation, Aisha Down, is a "Senior Tarbell Fellow". Charlotte Gill investigates what that means.
U.S. President Donald Trump today said on Truth Social that his administration plans to launch an investigation into fines the European Union has levied against tech companies like Apple, Google, and Meta for violating antitrust and Digital Markets Act rules.
Trump called the European Union's conduct "illegal and highly unethical," vowing to get the penalties reversed and planning to institute a "substantial tariff."
The European Union is at it again and, as usual, taking direct aim at GREAT American Companies! After having fined Apple, for no reason at all, 15 Billion Dollars, Meta, 3 Billion Dollars, Amazon 2.5 Billion Dollars, and many others, we have just been informed that Google, a truly advanced and amazing group, has been fined yet another 1 Billion Dollars, without explanation. This brings the Google total to over 18 Billion Dollars! This illegal and highly discriminatory practice started at these high levels during the first year of the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration, but it's not going to continue during the Trump Administration. The United States of America is not a "PIGGYBANK" for Europe, nor will we allow it to be! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that we will immediately initiate a 301 Investigation into the practice of "ROBBING" American Companies and, in turn, the American Taxpayer. The European Union will pay a very big price for this illegal and highly unethical conduct, which I have consistently warned them about. The penalties will be entirely reversed and, we anticipate, a substantial TARIFF to be placed on them at the earliest possible moment.
Apple was fined $570 million in 2025, Meta was fined $840 million in 2024 and $200 million in 2025, and Google was fined $1 billion this week after a $4.5 billion Android fine was upheld earlier this month.
Trump previously threatened European tariffs if the EU did not stop targeting U.S. companies, and the Office of the United States Trade Representative has also threatened to implement fees and restrictions on European services and companies.
Trump has focused heavily on tariffs during his second term, affecting U.S. companies and consumers. A 10 percent blanket tariff Trump enacted earlier this year expired today. The Trump administration implemented new tariffs to replace them, accusing 60 countries of failing to "impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor." The tariffs will affect goods from the UK, China, and the European Union, among others.
Dr. Tsimerman won one of four Fields Medals, an award for top mathematicians under 40, for his work on the André-Oort conjecture, but is now changing his focus to artificial intelligence.
Google was today fined €890 million ($1 billion) by the European Union for breaching antitrust rules with regard to its search and Google Play store services.
The European Commission found that Google had broken the Digital Markets Act (DMA) by using its dominant position in the search market to favour its own services, like shopping and hotel deals, over those of rivals.
The Commission also said that the company had abused its position by preventing developers from directing users to cheaper ways to buy apps and app subscriptions on websites and alternative app stores.
The Commission noted that Google has begun testing changes to how its own services are placed in search results and rolled out changes to its steering terms, which the EU’s main executive body described as substantial progress towards compliance.
“Google has fallen short of effective compliance with the Digital Markets Act, and today we have taken decisive yet balanced enforcement action sanctioning these breaches,” said Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition.
“The best products should succeed because they’re better, not because they’re owned by the company running the search engine. And European consumers have a right to be told by app developers where to sign up to the best offers, even when the app store owner does not get a cut.”
With search, Google is required to share with competitors — search engines and AI chatbots alike — a massive amount of user data from Google Search user interactions. What terms people search for, what they click on in results, what languages and devices they use. It’s all ostensibly anonymized but that’s tricky when it comes to search terms. A lot of the terms people type into web search fields are to some degree personally identifying. The EC seems to be saying it’s Google’s problem to filter out things like passwords and usernames and omit them from the shared datasets. Google can charge money for this access, but only under “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND)” prices, based on a Commission-defined methodology.
So if you search for the score of a sporting event, it’s illegal in the EU for Google to show you the score, like this search I just tried. What the EC is saying is that because Google Search is so popular, it’s no longer allowed to improve.
It drives me insane when in Europe the link between Google Search and Google Maps is broken and I often have to copy paste an address between the two. Thanks EU, what if I like Google’s integrations?
They could have simply added a selector when a user first clicks on the maps preview in the search result, and then remembered it on device or across that user’s account.
But of course, then the user could choose a competitor’s product and Google would have to honor it. That would be horrible, so instead they just made the user experience worse for everyone and elegantly made people blame the EU.
Back in 2018, Google was handed a record-setting 4.34 billion-euro ($4.9 billion) fine in Europe for abusing its monopoly on Android. The company has spent the intervening years challenging that decision, but the continent’s highest court has put a stop to that. The Court of Justice of the European Union has affirmed the penalty, meaning Google is out of options.
[…]
The EU took issue with Google search and Chrome being the default options on Android. Even devices made by other companies, such as Samsung and Xiaomi, include Google apps as the default per the Android licensing agreement, giving Google an unfair advantage, according to European antitrust regulators. This is not to be confused with a 2.95 billion euro ($3.45 billion) fine against Google’s advertising monopoly issued by the European Union last year.
There’s never a reason not to string the appeal process out, but it’s especially true when your profits are growing at an exceptional rate. By growing their profits around 5×, they’ve reduced the relative sting of this fine by 5×
Firm told to treat third-party services that appear in its results in ‘fair and non-discriminatory manner’
Google has been fined a total of €890m (£760m) by the EU for breaches of online competition laws by its search and app store services.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Google had broken the Digital Markets Act by giving priority to its own services, such as shopping and hotel deals, in search results over those of its rivals.
President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order on tariffs, in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., April 2, 2025.
A group of 25 U.S. lawmakers has sent a letter to President Trump calling on his administration to confront the European Union’s digital regulations, which they describe as discriminatory policies aimed at American technology giants.
In the letter, obtained by Reuters, the Republican lawmakers – including key members of the House trade subcommittee – urged the president to consider launching Section 301 investigations under U.S. trade law. Such probes could pave the way for tariffs or other retaliatory measures against the EU if talks fail to resolve the issues.
The central target of the complaint is the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which designates major U.S. companies – including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Booking Holdings – as “gatekeepers” subject to strict behavioral rules. Lawmakers argue the rules unfairly burden American firms while sparing European and Chinese competitors.
Key concerns raised in the letter:
• Cloud services: The likely inclusion of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s cloud business under DMA oversight would impose “unprecedented regulatory burdens” not faced by European or Chinese rivals.
• Google fines: An expected European Commission fine against Google this week for alleged DMA violations ignores the company’s significant changes to its search services.
• Inconsistent enforcement: Apple, Meta, and Amazon have been labeled gatekeepers based on user numbers in Europe, while Chinese platforms like Temu and AliExpress have been excluded.
“We write to bring to your attention the many ways the EU continues to pursue anti-competitive acts, policies, and practices as a tool of economic extraction and regulatory coercion against American firms,” the letter states. It warns that EU access to the U.S. market “is not guaranteed” if the discriminatory practices continue.
The European Commission has not yet responded to the letter. It maintains that its rules apply neutrally to promote fair competition and do not single out any country.
This latest congressional push aligns with President Trump’s long-standing criticism of EU digital policies and could signal a more aggressive U.S. trade posture toward Brussels in the coming months. Lawmakers emphasized that dialogue should be attempted first, but “all available tools” – including tariffs – remain on the table if needed.
The move highlights ongoing transatlantic tensions over technology regulation, data privacy, and market access that have persisted for years and are now poised to test the new Trump administration’s approach to international trade.
MacDailyNews Take: Good. The DMA does far more harm than good.
The European Union arose because the Europeans couldn’t compete on their own with the rest of the world, so they each lined up to surrender their national sovereignty, unique cultures, and dignity for an undemocratic, opaque, wasteful, bloated, bureaucratic quasi-governmental blob – and, even with the EU’s thumbs all over the scale, they still can’t compete. – MacDailyNews, March 4, 2024
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The European Commission yesterday adopted new exemptions to its Batteries Regulation that free the Apple Watch and AirPods from having to offer user-removable and replaceable batteries.
[…]
The reasoning largely mirrors why devices like electric toothbrushes were already exempt: Opening a compact, sealed enclosure and failing to reseal it properly could let water in and create a safety risk. Products can also qualify for exemption if their construction makes battery removal inherently dangerous, or if there is no realistic way to build in user access given current manufacturing methods.
[…]
The iPhone was already exempt from the removability rule under the original regulation, thanks to its battery cycle life and water resistance rating.
This is one of those exceedingly rare cases where EU legislation has produced an unambiguously good outcome: from February 2027, Logitech’s European wireless devices will ship with hard-pack, user-replaceable batteries, and Logitech will sell certified replacements.
Apple’s challenge against the EU’s designation of its App Stores and iOS platform as “gatekeepers” was dismissed by Europe’s top court on Wednesday, reports Reuters.
[…]
The company also disputed the classification of iMessage as a number-independent interpersonal communications service, or NIICS, which would subject the app to EU telecoms rules. But the General Court said Apple’s actions regarding the iMessage service are inadmissible.
Back in 2023, Apple acknowledged that it qualified under the then-new definition of being what the EU called a gatekeeper service. But key to that is the size of the operation, and since 2024, Apple has been claiming it runs five smaller App Stores rather than one large one.
[…]
“Irrespective of the devices in question,” ruled the judges, “those stores have the same purpose, namely to connect app developers with end users in order to facilitate the distribution of software applications.”
Apple disagreed with the decision but didn’t say yet if it would appeal. “We firmly believe the DMA’s mandate goes beyond what is lawful and proportionate, threatening to erode decades of privacy and security protections we’ve built and leaving our users vulnerable to new risks,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement to multipleoutlets. “We will continue advocating for the innovation and privacy our European customers deserve.”
Apple still has two cases pending with EU courts. The first is a challenge to the EU Commission’s decision last year forcing Apple to open iOS to third-party developers, and the second is an appeal against the €500 million fine imposed in April last year for anti-steering violations.
The issue before the commission currently is the built-in advantage for Gemini on Android. When you turn on any Google-powered Android phone, Gemini is already there and gets special treatment at the system level. The European Commission is taking aim at the lack of features available to third-party AI services. The commission believes that there are too many experiences on Android that only work with Google’s Gemini AI, and as a gatekeeper, Google must change that.
[…]
European regulators are proposing several broad changes to the way AI tools operate on Android phones. Some of this is straightforward, like allowing third-party AI tools to be invoked system-wide via hot words or button presses. This might also include allowing AI tools to view screen context when the user opens them.
[…]
Many of the Gemini AI features in Android, including Magic Cue, rely on running local models, and Google has been slow to allow third parties the system access to make that work effectively. So the EU is also suggesting a mandate that would ensure developers have the necessary hardware access to run local models “with high levels of performance, availability and responsiveness.”
The difference between Google and Apple on this front is that Google just blazed ahead and shipped Gemini integrated into Android in the EU, and is now facing compliance problems after shipping. (Ask forgiveness.) Apple isn’t shipping Siri AI in the EU in iOS 27, knowing that it’s going to be deemed non-compliant. (Ask permission.)
The European Commission today formally ordered Google to give third-party AI services the same access to Android device features that Gemini has.
[…]
The European Commission is giving Google a full year to implement changes that will meet the Digital Markets Act requirements, and that's before any legal appeals Google might make.
The EC is demanding that Google create APIs that allow third-party AI assistants to do everything Google Gemini does now[…]
[…]
Also, in my reading, the EC is demanding that Google make available to third-party AI assistants all information in Google’s own apps (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Maps, etc.) that Gemini has access to.
[…]
Apple unfortunately hasn’t shared any technical details describing its proposal for a “Trusted System Agent” that it shared with the EC last year. But whatever Apple’s vision for the Trusted System Agent is, I don’t see how the EC would deem it compliant with the DMA if they want from Apple anything close to what they are now demanding from Google.
I don’t know what will come of this, but I’m pleased to see it in the sense that it is logically coherent. The TSA seems like a way to give the appearance of doing something without actually solving the problem. Like Gruber, I don’t really see why Google would want to comply with this rather than taking their Gemini ball and going home. Unlike Gruber, I don’t find it scary to let users opt into sharing their data and background time with apps of their choosing. I don’t like software design by government committee, but it seems less bad than further entrenching an unfettered monopoly. Maybe this could have been avoided if Google had developed its own reasonable solution instead of shipping something that was obviously not compliant.
Unfortunately, due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple will not be able to ship Siri AI in the European Union with the release of iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. Over the past several months, EU regulators did not accept any of Apple’s proposed solutions to bring Siri AI to the EU while safely supporting other virtual assistants.
[…]
EU users will be able to access Siri AI on macOS 27 and visionOS 27. Developers located in the EU will not be able to test or use the new Siri AI features for their apps on iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and watchOS 27.
[…]
According to EU regulators, the DMA requires Apple to give any AI system nearly unlimited access to a user’s device, as well as the ability to act on that access autonomously without a user’s ongoing visibility and control.
[…]
Apple designed a solution called Trusted System Agent — an intermediary that would allow virtual assistants to safely access the same features and capabilities as Siri AI for devices in the EU. Apple also shared a plan to launch Siri AI in the EU while gradually rolling out this new solution over an 18-month period. The European Commission said no. In fact, the European Commission did not agree to any of Apple’s proposals.
This phrasing is not very clear, perhaps intentionally so. Apple is trying to give the impression that it did all this extra work to meet the DMA’s requirements, and yet the EC rejected its proposals, so it’s their fault Siri AI isn’t shipping in the EU. But it looks like the crux is that the Trusted System Agent is currently vaporware. What the EC rejected is that Apple wanted to be able to ship Siri AI now on the promise of future openness. The TSA would actually be built during this 18-month window of exclusivity. It’s not surprising that the EU would reject that proposal. The App Store doesn’t approve apps that flout the guidelines but promise to comply later. It doesn’t even entertain proposals of the form, “If I built this would it be approved?”
Apple said it detailed its plans for Siri AI to EU regulators six months ago, along with a technical proposal to allow secure third-party access to that data.
“In essence, a commission that’s asking us to conduct a very risky experiment on many, many, many tens of millions of users,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s marketing chief, told reporters, “and we only want to ship these capabilities when we can do so safely.”
The EU said not to ship it without the TSA, yet Joswiak spins this as the EU asking Apple to be reckless? And if Apple wanted to ship them safely, why did it stop working on them?
Apple spoke of having spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours on changes to comply with the EU. In the new report, though, Apple now says that it no longer knows what to work on.
So currently none of its engineers are working on adapting Siri AI to meet the EU’s demands.
It seems like Apple isn’t taking this very seriously. They’re more interested in trying to score PR points by blaming the delay on the EC rather than on building something compliant. So I guess the EC was prescient not to grant an exemption based on the promise that they’d follow through with the TSA.
However, do I think Apple should be made to open up that level of system access?
Honestly yes. They are worried about protecting my data. But it’s MINE. Me, the user.
Stick a big privacy prompt, maybe a system settings screen and reboot, but I want access to my data!
We can look to BrowserEngineKit to see how well it works out to introduce a trusted intermediate layer that Apple doesn’t itself rely on. And this seems like a much harder problem.
I keep seeing people (usually Americans) confused by where the EU is coming from with Apple and the DMA, eg “how can they care about privacy but also demand AI companies can access your data?”
My read is, the EU’s starting point is that a gatekeeper cannot treat itself as inherently more trustworthy than any other company. So if anyone’s AI can access your data, including Apple’s, it’s not up to the gatekeeper to say “we trust ourselves but don’t trust other companies” and force that on users.
The users should get to choose who they trust. And I think Apple is trying to draw a different line than it says. It worries that AI could be hijacked to steal your passwords and photos. But you can already install apps that manage and access that data. You can also install apps that access your calendar and mail data, and these apps can incorporate AI. Such apps actually get more access than what the EC wants because they must communicate with your servers directly. I would rather let an AI search my downloaded e-mails than read/write to my IMAP server, but Apple is blocking that option. The actual line it’s drawing isn’t that AI can’t access your data but that (aside from iMessage) it can only access it via additional engineering work and additional hoops for users to enter credentials. It seems like what Apple really wants is to make it hard for anyone to compete with Siri.
I’m skeptical that Siri AI is even capable of being meaningfully private or secure. As far as I know there is no mitigation for prompt injection, as Matthew Green describes here.
If it has access to private information, is exposed to external input and can access the Internet then how can they meaningfully claim it’s private or secure?
There’s a lot to unpack here, including more background information — and on-the-record statements — from a briefing Apple held Tuesday that I was invited to at Apple Park.
It’s frustrating that Apple has said so little on the record. They want to communicate that their “offers for compromise have been rejected,” but what exactly did they offer? Personally, I don’t think the TSA would be a very good solution because it would lock in both the limitations of Apple’s technology and their role as a gatekeeper. But Apple did not even say that the EC rejected the idea of the TSA, only that it rejected their proposal to violate the law for 18 months while building it.
But the bottom line is that Apple’s public statements regarding the DMA and the European Commission have never been this strident before.
[…]
Now, they’re a bit more on war footing. There’s a massive gulf between what Apple is willing to do with Siri AI in the EU and what the Commission is demanding from Apple for DMA compliance.
The European Commission isn’t demanding anything, the law is demanding it. The laws have been in place for several years now, Apple is currently in default of the law on several fronts, and is fighting its existing fines.
When the Chinese government wanted access to user data, Apple complied, but when the EU parliament voted for their citizens to be able to choose how to share their own data, that put Apple on a “war footing.”
There is some kind of irony in how Apple isn’t allowing Europe access to the new AI stuff; and meanwhile for the US, Apple is removing the setting for us to opt-out of it, effectively forcing it on us.
That’s how it is these days, huh? Either a government or a giant corporation makes our technology choices for us. We don’t get to choose for ourselves.
What exactly is the motivation for Apple and Google to engineer entirely separate systems for the EU to bring new features into compliance with the Commission’s broad interpretation of the DMA? Because if Apple doesn’t engineer a DMA-compliant version of Siri AI, iOS users in the EU will ... switch to Android, whose system-level AI was deemed noncompliant by the Commission a few months ago?
I briefly hoped that the DMA would lead to a sort of California effect for software, where products are designed for the stricter (more open, in this case) jurisdiction, and everyone else reaps the benefits, too, because that’s easier for companies than making separate versions of their products. But it turns out that Apple finds it well worth it to feature flag away the EU features it doesn’t want us to have, as well as the ones it doesn’t want to adapt for the DMA.
This doesn’t directly hurt Apple. It doesn’t force Apple to design, engineer, and ship a compliant EU-exclusive version of Siri AI that supports plug-and-play LLM back ends. It only hurts iPhone users who live in the EU, who are stuck with the old dumb version of Siri for the foreseeable future.
This demonstrates a market failure or legislative failure, depending on how you look at it. Both halves of the duopoly are in conflict with the law of the second largest economy in the word. Users will get a worse Siri, but this doesn’t bother Apple enough to do anything about it. Maybe the customers in the EU can be used as a bargaining chip. Neither Apple nor Google is worried that a competitor will come along with a compliant phone to challenge their dominance.
Gotta admit that as an EU citizen, I feel handicapped when it comes to brainstorming ideas to utilize Foundation Models.
Like, if I were to build a new app around them, it’s difficult to gauge if this is something Siri AI does out of the box when it isn’t available to me.
And unlike Apple, I intend to build software for the entire world.
Apple is acting out of greed and spite (see their hairbrained fee structures for alternative marketplaces as an example), but also yes, the DMA and enforcement thereof seems like a particularly difficult and capricious regulatory dynamic.
[…]
Those arguing that Apple is acting purely out of spite seem to suggest there is some obvious solution for iPhone Mirroring that would satisfy the interoperability mandate, but they never go into what that obvious solution is because they don’t know. They don’t know because I would guess no one does, not even Apple and certainly not the European Commission.
As far as I can tell, the European Commission doesn’t see it as their responsibility to help gatekeepers design features ahead of time in a way that should be compliant with the DMA. What they want instead is to decide whether or not a given feature runs afoul of the DMA after its released in the EU and presumably after they’ve gotten feedback from third parties.
If a developer emails Apple and asks if an app idea they have will be approved, they will get told to build it, submit it to the App Store, and see. The EU is the App Store here, and Siri AI is the app. I guess Apple don’t like their own policies.
I sympathize, even though Apple is in a better position than the developer, because it has more resources, because it would only potentially be blocked from shipping in one market, and because it can still sell its product in the EU, just with certain features disabled. Building something that might not be accepted is risky, but if you don’t submit anything that you think would be complaint with the rules, you don’t seem very serious. It’s still unclear to me exactly what Apple’s plan is. Its press release says it “will continue working” on bringing the features to the EU, but its SVP of marketing said in an interview that “none of its engineers are currently working on solutions.” Perhaps this implies that it’s banking on a legal or political solution rather than a technical one.
While the relationship between the European Commission and Google tells us nothing about playing ball, it tells us exactly how inconsequential support for alternative marketplaces is when it comes to regulatory scrutiny of integrated features. Apple hasn’t played ball with alternative marketplaces and now its new AI-based features are being withheld from the EU lest they get scrutinized for fines by the European Commission. Google hasn’t had to play ball with alternative marketplaces and now its new AI-based features are either being scrutinized for fines by the European Commission or being withheld lest they also get scrutinized. The European Commission is, rightly so in my opinion, regulating both operating systems equally and regardless of their support for alternative marketplaces.
It struck me today what a contrast this is with the rest of the AI world, increasingly connected via MCP. Imagine if Gmail was only accessible to AI on Android phones. If Teams was only accessible from a Windows Surface laptop. That is the kind of environment Apple’s policies create, with data locked into silos and monopolies free to leverage their existing strengths into dominance of new technologies too.
No thanks. Just as I should be able to sideload an app onto my own phone, I should be able to choose whether ChatGPT can access my iMessage history. The world is not going to come crashing down by giving users control of their own data.
Apple CEO Tim Cook held “constructive” talks with EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen on Tuesday about releasing Siri AI in the bloc while complying with the bloc’s digital rules, reports the Financial Times ($).
[…]
As for Apple’s proposed Trusted System Agent, a Commission official told the publication its contact with Apple on the idea was limited, and that it lacked a concrete proposal or details on how such an agent would work beyond the general concept. The official claimed Apple “focused on obtaining a green light to delay compliance.”
The DMA has been in effect for nearly four years and there is no reason why either party should be having so much difficulty with this proposal stage. Either the Commission is mischaracterizing Apple’s engagement, or Apple’s representatives need to be far better prepared.
It seems like Apple’s strategy is to encourage its customers to pressure the EU into changing the rules.
EU tech regulation, Digital Markets Act, Apple Europe sales, Apple regulation, European Union, Siri AI, iPhone features, device interoperability, App Store changes, alternative marketplaces, iPhone Mirroring, AirPods translation, Apple privacy, iPhone security, app sideloading, platform competition, DMA compliance, Apple Intelligence, European technology, government control
EU tech regulation is no longer limited to App Store payment rules or competition disputes hidden from ordinary consumers. It is beginning to determine which features reach European devices, how quickly they arrive and how deeply third-party companies can interact with the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
The Digital Markets Act was designed to reduce the control of large technology platforms over software distribution, payments, browsers, digital assistants and connected hardware. For Apple, compliance has already produced alternative app marketplaces, web distribution, third-party payment options, additional default-app controls and expanded access to iPhone technologies.
The next phase reaches much deeper into the operating system. European regulators want competing accessories, cloud services and AI assistants to receive access to capabilities traditionally reserved for Apple’s own products.
Apple argues that some of those demands could weaken privacy and security. The European Commission says the company is responsible for creating compliant systems that preserve both competition and user protection.
Between those positions sits a large and commercially significant group of customers. Europe generated $28.06 billion in Apple sales during the quarter ending March 28, 2026, up from $24.45 billion one year earlier. Six-month European sales reached $66.20 billion, compared with $58.32 billion during the same period of fiscal 2025.
Europe therefore represented more than one-quarter of Apple’s latest quarterly revenue. It is too valuable to leave behind, but increasingly difficult to serve with the same software experience available elsewhere.
EU Tech Regulation Is Splitting Feature Availability
Regional differences once centered mainly on language support, licensing agreements or local services. EU tech regulation is creating a more structural divide.
Apple has blamed Digital Markets Act requirements for delaying Siri AI across the European Union. The company says regulators expect competing AI assistants to receive extensive access to personal information, apps and device actions before Apple can reserve those capabilities for its own assistant.
The disagreement concerns more than answering questions. Siri AI is designed to read personal context, understand onscreen information and complete actions across apps. That may include finding messages, accessing files, making purchases or sending information on the user’s behalf.
Opening those capabilities to outside AI systems requires new permission structures, technical interfaces and safeguards. Apple says it cannot release its assistant first and add competing access later without risking regulatory action. The Commission says Apple had sufficient time to design an interoperable solution.
Other delayed European features have included iPhone Mirroring on Mac, Live Translation through AirPods and certain location-based Maps capabilities. Each feature touches a different part of the ecosystem, but all depend on privileged communication between Apple devices, software and services.
The consequence is becoming visible at purchase. Two customers can buy the same iPhone model at similar prices and receive different capabilities because one lives inside the European Union.
Image Credit: Apple Inc.
Feature Adoption Becomes Slower and Less Predictable
Delayed availability can weaken the adoption of new hardware features even when the devices themselves continue selling well.
Siri AI is intended to become a central part of newer iPhones, iPads and Macs. Buyers who cannot access it lose part of the justification for newer chips, additional memory and on-device AI processing. Developers also face a smaller addressable audience for apps built around the new assistant.
AirPods Live Translation presents a similar problem. A feature designed to demonstrate the combination of iPhone processing, microphones and wearable audio becomes unavailable in a region built around dozens of languages and frequent cross-border travel.
iPhone Mirroring affects the relationship between iPhone and Mac. Users outside the EU can interact with the phone from macOS, while European users may receive notifications without gaining the complete experience.
These differences do not necessarily stop hardware sales. Apple’s newest results show strong European demand despite years of regulatory conflict. They can, however, reduce the speed at which customers use the ecosystem’s newest capabilities.
The effect may grow as software becomes a larger part of hardware differentiation. A faster processor has limited emotional value when the feature designed to demonstrate it is unavailable.
Apple Sales Show Why Europe Cannot Be Ignored
Apple does not report European Union revenue separately. Its Europe segment also includes countries outside the bloc, along with India, the Middle East and Africa. The official segment remains the best regularly published measure of the region’s commercial weight.
European sales rose approximately 15% year over year in Apple’s latest reported quarter. During the first six months of fiscal 2026, the segment expanded by roughly 14%.
Those figures weaken the argument that regulation is already driving customers away from Apple hardware. Demand remains strong, supported by the iPhone 17 family, Mac sales, services and the company’s installed base.
The financial risk is more gradual. Regional software fragmentation can raise engineering costs, delay launches and make European devices less competitive against products able to offer complete feature sets.
Apple must maintain separate distribution rules, payment systems, browser options and eligibility checks. Developers must decide whether alternative stores, external payments or EU-specific business terms justify additional work. Support teams must explain why features differ between countries using the same operating-system version.
A market responsible for more than $28 billion in one quarter can absorb considerable compliance expense. It can also influence Apple’s global product decisions when regulators demand interfaces that cannot be restricted to Europe easily.
A Slow Transfer of Ecosystem Control
The escalating regulatory environment also creates a more fundamental concern: control over complex technology ecosystems can gradually move away from the companies that designed them and toward government committees, regulatory bodies and administrative processes.
That transfer rarely happens through one dramatic order. It develops through repeated obligations covering app distribution, payment systems, browser engines, digital assistants, hardware access, data portability and interoperability. Each requirement may appear narrow when considered alone. Together, they can redefine who determines how the ecosystem operates.
Apple built its platform around tight integration between hardware, software, services and security. Regulators increasingly treat parts of that integration as market power that must be opened to competitors. The danger is that an ecosystem designed as one coordinated environment becomes subject to decisions made by committees that do not carry direct responsibility for product quality, reliability or long-term maintenance.
This can become a slow trap. Once a platform is required to expose one layer, regulators may use that access as the basis for demanding another. A payment exception can be followed by alternative app stores. Alternative stores can lead to broader installation rights. Device interoperability can expand into access for AI assistants, personal data and system actions.
The boundaries of the platform are then set less by engineering judgment and more by regulatory negotiation.
Government agencies have legitimate authority to address competition and consumer harm. The concern appears when regulation shifts from preventing abusive conduct to directing product architecture. At that point, public authorities begin influencing feature design, release timing, software permissions and the relationship between first-party and third-party services.
That creates consequences beyond Apple. Any company considering a tightly integrated product may decide that deep integration invites intervention. Businesses could avoid building ambitious ecosystems if successful coordination later becomes grounds for forced access.
Innovation then becomes shaped by what regulators are likely to permit rather than by what engineers believe will produce the safest or most coherent experience.
Image Credit: Ink Drop / Alamy Stock Photo
Competition Gains Come With Real Consumer Choices
EU policy has produced benefits that Apple rarely emphasizes. Users can install apps through alternative marketplaces or directly from authorized developers. Developers can offer external payment methods, promote different prices and avoid relying entirely on Apple’s distribution system.
Alternative browser engines can compete with WebKit, while users have more control over default apps. Contactless payment access has expanded beyond Apple Pay, allowing competing wallet providers to use the iPhone’s NFC technology under approved conditions.
Interoperability requirements could also improve third-party accessories. Smartwatches, headphones and other devices may gain better notification access, background connectivity and proximity pairing with the iPhone.
These changes can increase competition and reduce the advantage Apple gives its own services and accessories. A third-party smartwatch should not become artificially less useful simply because it was not made in Cupertino.
The difficulty is separating legitimate platform access from unlimited access. A notification interface is one thing. An autonomous AI assistant capable of reading messages, accessing files and acting across apps introduces a different level of sensitivity.
Privacy and Security Risks Are Not Theoretical
Alternative app distribution increases user choice, but it also moves some responsibility away from the App Store. Apple continues to notarize apps distributed through approved alternative channels, checking for known malware and severe fraud. That process is narrower than a complete App Store review.
Purchases made outside Apple’s payment system also fall outside its normal refund and billing support. Users may need to resolve disputes directly with the developer or payment provider.
A malicious marketplace, deceptive payment page or compromised developer account can create opportunities for fraud. Enterprise users face additional concerns when employees install software from sources their organization has not approved.
The AI question reaches further. A third-party assistant may need permission to access messages, photos, calendars, documents and app controls. Even a reputable provider can collect more information than the user expects or introduce vulnerabilities through poorly designed integrations.
Apple can build permission prompts, app isolation and revocation controls, but technical access always creates some exposure. Security depends on how narrowly permissions are defined, how visibly they are used and whether the operating system can stop unauthorized actions.
The Commission maintains that interoperability and privacy can coexist. Apple maintains that regulators are demanding access before adequate protections are ready. Both positions contain a legitimate concern: dominant platforms should not block competition, and competition should not require users to surrender control of personal data.
When regulators require a company to alter its architecture, responsibility can become blurred.
Apple remains the company customers blame when an iPhone feature fails, a third-party marketplace distributes a harmful app or an outside assistant misuses personal data. Regulators may have required the access, but they do not operate the device, provide technical support or repair the damage to the platform’s reputation.
This creates an accountability gap. Government committees can mandate openness without assuming the commercial and security consequences of that openness. Apple must comply, maintain the system and explain the outcome to users.
The same problem applies to delayed features. Regulators may argue that Apple chose not to release a service, while Apple may argue that the required conditions made the launch unsafe or technically impractical. Customers are left with less functionality and no simple way to determine who caused the delay.
Over time, the ecosystem can become a negotiated compromise rather than a product with one coherent direction. That may satisfy formal compliance while producing a weaker experience for everyone involved.
The risk is not that governments will literally operate Apple’s software. It is that committees increasingly define the conditions under which Apple can design, connect and release its own features. Control shifts through constraints.
The Industry Will Follow Europe’s Experiment
The consequences extend beyond one company. Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and other platform operators face related European obligations. Hardware makers must consider whether ecosystem advantages can survive when core services are required to support rivals.
Smaller developers may gain new distribution and payment choices, but they may also inherit more compliance, customer-service and security responsibilities. Accessory companies could compete more effectively while becoming accountable for handling sensitive device data.
Other governments are watching. Rules introduced in Europe can influence legislation elsewhere, particularly when companies decide that maintaining one global technical framework is easier than operating several regional versions.
Apple is unlikely to abandon Europe or stop adapting its products. Its sales provide too much evidence of the region’s importance. The company will continue negotiating, appealing decisions and building compliance systems while withholding features it considers unsafe under current demands.
European customers may receive more app stores, payment choices and accessory compatibility. They may also wait longer for headline features included with the same hardware elsewhere.
The deeper consequence may be a technology industry that becomes more cautious about building tightly integrated products. Companies may design around anticipated regulatory demands from the beginning, limiting exclusive features, reducing private-system integration or avoiding innovations that depend on controlled access.
EU tech regulation began as an effort to constrain dominant platforms. Its long-term effect may be to transfer part of the power to shape those platforms from companies and users to regulatory institutions.
That shift deserves scrutiny equal to the market power it is intended to correct. Competition rules can restrain abuse. They can also become a slow mechanism for placing product design, security choices and ecosystem evolution under government supervision.
Shady Control and Bureaucracy
The danger grows when regulatory discretion becomes buried beneath permits, approvals, negotiations and technical committees that operate beyond meaningful public scrutiny.
The more power officials hold over which features, contracts or technologies may proceed—and when—the greater the opportunity for lobbying, favoritism and selective enforcement to influence outcomes. What begins as oversight can gradually become a system in which delay itself is leverage, while responsibility disappears inside layers of administration.
For the technology industry, that risks replacing transparent product decisions with political access, negotiated exceptions and regulatory influence exercised far from the consumers expected to live with the consequences.
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