Turns out Apple will bring its “Apple Intelligence” AI to Europe after all—though only to a relatively small subset of its userbase.
Apple said in late June that it would not roll out Apple Intelligence to EU users because of the interoperability requirements in Europe’s new Big Tech antitrust law, the Digital Markets Act, which it said “could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security.”
However, not every Apple platform is designated as a “gatekeeper” under the DMA—the status that brings with it those interoperability requirements. iOS and iPadOS are both classed as gatekeeper platforms, as are the Safari browser and the App Store, but MacOS is not. Which probably explains why, as 9to5Mac reports, Apple’s release notes for the beta version of the upcoming MacOS Sequoia 15.1 operating system say only that the new AI features will be unavailable in China; there’s no mention of Europe, unlike in the equivalent release notes for the iOS 18.1 beta.
From a purely practical point of view, this distinction (which I have asked Apple to confirm; no response yet) would let the company at least get some idea of how European users are responding to the AI features, even if there are about 20 times as many iPhone and iPad users in the EU as there are Mac users.
But I’m still somewhat amazed that Apple seems set to forego the extra sales of this year’s iPhone that it would achieve if European buyers could get the AI features only that device (and last year’s iPhone Pro and Pro Max) can support. There simply isn’t as much reason to upgrade without that part of the pitch.
The fact is, we still don’t know what Apple’s problem is with the DMA’s interoperability requirements, a month and a half after Apple made its announcement.
At the time, I dismissed Apple’s statement with the rather inadequate observation that those requirements focus on messaging. That is one of the focuses, but the DMA also says that Apple would have to let third-party hardware and services tap into the same virtual assistant-controlled iOS features that Apple’s own chatbot can control—and this is where one can more easily imagine some kind of security or privacy issue coming up.
But imagining is all we can do, as neither Apple nor the European Commission (which enforces the DMA) is explaining the precise problem—the scenario to help us understand exactly how the DMA poses a threat to the safety of Apple Intelligence users (or does not).
For the Commission, this is supposedly a matter of policy. “We do not comment on individual decisions of companies,” a spokesperson said in a canned reply to my questions today. Commission antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager has previously claimed that Apple’s inability to achieve antitrust compliance means “they know 100%” that their strategy for rolling out Apple Intelligence “is another way of disabling competition.”
If it can, Apple should hit back at this characterization with some specificity about the security threats it’s trying to ward off.
After all, Apple often cries “but security” when regulators tell it to be less closed, and the sky still hasn’t fallen in as a result of, say, the DMA forcing Apple to allow third-party iOS app stores in Europe. As things stand, one must give some credence to Vestager’s accusation that the company is effectively saying “we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition.” That claim is in itself annoyingly vague, but if it’s not accurate, Apple needs to explain why.
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David Meyer
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