It wasn’t too long ago, when Apple avoided the term Artificial Intelligence like the plague and only referred to machine learning. They have been using some kind of models behind the scene for a long time, though: the better autocorrect in iOS 17 was definitely using the kind of machine learning behind the scenes, as was the camera2. Furthermore, lots of the Siri features, commonly known as Siri suggestions, are most certainly powered by some form of artificial intelligence. And they do also work quite well, since they can take environment queues (such as your current position) and surface the application or actions you are most likely to use.
And so far, this has to my knowledge all been done on device, as Apple has put it on their masthead that they are a privacy protecting company. This has changed with the announcement of iOS 18, which will integrate OpenAI’s large language models in the operating system. This means that user’s queries to whatever smart assistant they use on the phone will be sent to OpenAI’s servers and processed there.
What does this have to do with the European Union?
Apple claims that it will not bring these features to user’s in the European Union because of the Digital Market Act. While there might be a shred of truth in the statement, it is oversimplifying it by a lot. What is especially strange is how well this spinning of facts works so well for many good Apple reporting outlets:
This is the framing Apple wants to sell for their decision to withhold features from the EU, and blogs are parroting it.
In reality, Apple is purposefully withholding these features from the EU, either because Apple are being retaliatory against EU customers for the existence of the DMA, or because Apple (with full knowledge of the DMA for years) refused to build these features in compliance with it.
Apple chose to harm their products in the EU. The DMA didn't. This framing is marketing.
I mean kudos to Apple for spinning this that perfectly, but I simply don’t believe it entirely or if we take them at face value, it actually looks even worse.
The case if you don’t believe Apple
Of course, Apple could just be super upset about the European Union partially taking away their cash machine, the App store, with their monopoly. Now, just don’t bring some features to the European Union and hope that people will be that upset that the EU changes course. I think this is actually quite an unlikely case, but even more unlikely is the European Union changing their stance. This is a key piece of the EU legislature, and the EU generally has broad support for their organisation as well as for their policies.
It could also be that there are some kinks to be ironed out and Apple just took the opportunity to blame the European Union. Maybe the AI features are not that ready yet, they need some more work to also work in other languages, and therefore it is just easier to blame the European Union instead of taking the blame themselves for Apple. Or they want to slowly ramp up their capacity because the artificial intelligence requires a lot of computing power, and they are not ready. Either way, just blame the European Union and you’ve hit two birds with one stone.
And as we can see from the post above, it absolutely worked like a charm.
What if you believe Apple
If you believe Apple that they actually can’t make this work — and by this, I really mean can’t make this work and not just can’t be bothered3 — then things look even worse. The European Union has some of the strongest privacy rights as well as some of the strongest consumer protections. So if apple can’t make this work in the EU, maybe they just didn’t bother with those things. Perhaps they cut some corners somewhere and know that they wouldn’t get away with in the European Union. Which, in my opinion, is probably worse than if they are just making a big stink about the Digital Markets Act.
Or the alternative might be even worse. Apple thinks it cannot bring those features into the European Union, following the values and rules of the EU. That would mean, by Apple’s own admission, they cannot implement those features while following privacy requirements as well as requirements against having a monopoly. And if this is the case, this is honestly just an admission on Apple’s part of the larger problem with all these AI tools. These AI tools cannot be built without using people’s data without their permission. And further, people building these AI tools can’tseemtofigureouthowconsentworks. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, Apple’s new AI tools don’t seem to be one bit better.
What does this mean for me
Depending on what Apple thinks off during the day that they make the decision, I will land in the group that doesn’t have the artificial intelligence features with iOS 18. And honestly, for the moment, that is just perfectly fine for me and saves me from trying to figure out how to deactivate them. I currently don’t have any interest in using them, I have tried out most AI tools and so far, I’m thoroughly underwhelmed. To quote a colleague of mine: “AI is not magic, but it can be useful”. And so far, I think the damage they are doing far outweighs the usefulness, at least in the way they are currently being used broadly.
I do think there is one piece of software that would strongly benefit from some AI: Siri. Siri is so hilariously bad at understanding most things I tell it and the tasks I want to use it for are often simple enough, I think some generative AI would be of great help to the voice assistant. But let’s see where this journey takes us.
Apple’s definition of Europe is always a bit unclear. For me, living (and using plenty of Apple devices) in Switzerland, this is quite strange. No third-party app store for me, after all, I don’t live in the European Union. On the other hand, GDPR was applied almost globally. Not sure what is happening with this announcement, though. ↩︎
The optimising features in Apple’s camera app always seem to be turned up a bit too much. For example, recently I took the picture below on a hike. In reality, it was so much more foggy than in the image. In fact, one could barely see the path across the stream, while the iPhone was happy to basically remove as much fog as possible from the image.
And while the image definitely looks ascetically pleasing (arguably better than it was in real life), this is not what photos are supposed to do. In this specific case, I wanted to take a picture to show how much fog there was, which this picture spectacularly fails at. ↩︎
If Apple can’t be bothered, that means that they have developed these features knowingly in such a way that they cannot comply with the Digital Markets Act. Apple has known about the DMA for a long time, and in this case, they just refused to build these features in compliance. Which really is their own stupid fault for doing it in that way. ↩︎
