The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple chief executive Tim Cook and EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen held “constructive” talks, and both sides trying to lower the temperature in a bitter scrap over “Siri AI.”
An EU spokesperson said the virtual meeting involved a “constructive exchange on topics of common interest, on which the work continues”.
According to the Financial Times the meeting included talks about how Job’s Mob can launch its reinvented Siri in Europe without collecting millions of dollars in fines.
Two people familiar with the talks said the issue was whether Siri AI would violate the bloc’s flagship competition rules.
Its launch has exposed a stand-off between the $4.25 trillion tech giant and Brussels over the Digital Markets Act. The DMA is supposed to open big tech outfits to competition, which Job’s Mob treats like garlic waved at a vampire.
Apple has claimed that a lack of engagement from the EU is stopping it from launching Siri AI in the bloc. The company claims the DMA has made business harder on the continent and worsened the consumer experience. It moans that the EU has failed to engage with its proposed solution on Siri.
The company has already called on Brussels to repeal part of its digital rule book to allow US tech companies to have a manifest destiny in Europe.
The new Siri turns the voice assistant into a chatbot similar to ChatGPT or Claude, with access to personal data. The problem is the bloc’s requirement that rival voice assistants get a similar level of access to device data.
That follows delayed AI launches from other US tech companies in the EU, including Google’s AI overview.
Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak said: “This is not some sort of effort for us to be punitive over our feelings with the DMA: We have worked very hard to try to avoid this outcome. The commission has not accepted our proposals or meaningfully engaged with us.”
EU officials say Job’s Mob wants an unacceptable 18-month carve-out from its interoperability obligations and have pushed back against what they call “a regulatory holiday” that would harm competitors.
After all, a holiday is good if you already own the resort, the airport and the little bus to the hotel.
European officials reported hundreds of emails from Apple fanboys accusing Brussels of depriving Europeans of shiny new AI toys. One EU official said a commission spokesperson received abusive messages, including several death threats. Nothing is more vengeful than an Apple fanboy who is unable to show off the latest features on their shiny toys.
In November, Job’s Mob first proposed a technical fix to the EU that it later called a “Trusted System Agent”.
The idea is a software layer between a user’s device data and a third-party AI model.
It would allow rival AI assistants to draw on personal information from the device without granting them full access to the data. Job’s Mob has not built the agent yet and says it wants EU assurances before it starts.
The commission said the company lacked a concrete proposal or details on how the agent would work beyond the general concept.
They said Job’s Mob “focused on obtaining a green light to delay the compliance”.
Google did much better. After changes to Android, Google entered a formal consultation on how it could comply with the DMA and avoid massive fines.
It is not as if Apple as not had time to fix the problem. Job’s Mob first announced the planned Siri overhaul in 2024, two years after the DMA entered into force.
