No, this is unrelated from privacy. The issue is that the EU won’t allow the new Siri because Apple isn’t willing to open up the system enough for 3rd party AI agents to get the same functionality.

Because Siri is the brand and other competitors will dilute the brand with their inferior products, is the line of reasoning, I'm sure. I'm unclear on why apple is branding the AI launcher or whatever if it's just going to be a wrapper for a third party product, however.

Functionally the EU is requiring that Apple dramatically RELAX their privacy and security postures.

I’m sure Apple doesn’t want to cave and give OpenAI free access to the spotlight semantic db, the ability see what’s on your screen at all times, etc.

> Functionally the EU is requiring that Apple dramatically RELAX their privacy and security postures.

No. Interoperability doesn't require Apple relax their privacy and security postures. It could instead require third parties to improve theirs.

> It could instead require third parties to improve theirs.

Apple made it sound like their proposal for that was rejected by the EU. And it would be consistent with previous regulatory decisions by the EU for them to not want Apple to be setting the rules for how third-party interoperability partners/competitors ensure privacy.

It seems to me that the EU has a preference for protecting privacy with legal mechanisms, and generally doesn't approve of Apple's attempts to protect privacy with technical mechanisms because that inevitably limits interoperability with systems that aren't designed around the same restrictions and assumptions.

I’m sure they love it when Apple says, “Well… they COULD give is their models to put in private compute, but we’re not paying them for that and they’re not getting any more data than we get, ourselves. Which is exactly none.”

Would that be allowed under EU law?

Apple is building a system that is more private than EU law requires. If they tell say Facebook that Facebook can integrate in but first must meet the same more than is legally required standard Apple is aiming for wouldn't that be anti-competitive?

Same as you wouldn't want every app to read your contacts or location. If we only had something to do that.

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Which I would argue is HARDER to do while preserving privacy.

Part of it is also a certification circus.

For example, with Copilot, you get a contractual pinky promise that they cannot access your data.

Can engineers really not access ? Can the police really not access ?

It's like AirTag for example. Apple cannot access it because it's scientifically "impossible" by design, but if they sign-in to your account, well it's over.

Once Apple fills the right audit / certification / paperwork they will be able to enable that feature. It could also be a negotiation lever.

> privacy is not a priority

Isn’t this less about privacy than competition?

EU privacy laws are not there to protect your privacy, its there because the law makers don't know how modern privacy works and wants their name on the law so it seems they did something.

I think you should elaborate a bit on that because to me it seems that EU privacy laws are actually fairly good at protecting privacy.

EU has some of the best consumer protection and privacy laws on the planet.

Their laws are basically the equivalent of if there is no code, there are no bugs. EU laws forces citizens to get no new tech, privacy preserved.

Uhm no, EU privacy laws are actually pretty simple: do not collect data you don't need without asking consent from a user first.

Which should IMO be the basic principle worldwide. But unfortunately in many countries, companies are more powerful than governments/regulators, so they get to grab everything they can get their hands on.

Man, if we had computers in EU we'd be really angry at your dumb false posts.