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Apple won't roll out AI tech in EU market over regulatory concerns
- helsinkiandrew 2y agohttps://archive.ph/UFDra https://archive.ph/UFDra
- MBCook 2y agoHeh. The spite wars continue. I’m sure this will earn you a lot of favor, Apple.
- laborcontract 2y agoTheir new slate of ai products will be able to have screen reading capabilities. There are legitimate concerns for user privacy here. Their agreement with OpenAI is likely very strict.
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoHow do people survive with Linux and Windows.
- crazygringo 2y agoDo you call being hacked with ransomware "surviving"? Or being part of a nefarious botnet "surviving"? Or accidentally installing keyloggers "surviving"?
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoI am happy to make the decisions myself than have some random tech company decide on my behalf.
- crazygringo 2y agoOK great, but getting hacked by ransomware still isn't what I'd call "surviving". It's a matter of tradeoffs. In exchange for making more security decisions for yourself, you wind up with a much higher risk of losing your data and privacy. So it's important to acknowledge what you're giving up as well. And Apple isn't exactly a "random tech company". It's currently literally the third largest company in the world [1]. That's about as opposite of being a "random" company as a company can possibly be. In contrast, it's precisely the software that people do install from seeming "random tech companies" that can conceal secret keyloggers, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by_market_capitalization#Trillion-dollar_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- talldayo 2y agoGiven that all three of those things are documented and present threats to Windows and MacOS (as well as iOS and Android), I guess so. Those users seem to "surivive" fine.
- crazygringo 2y agoI've never heard of ransomware, botnets, or keyloggers on iPhones. I know less about Android, and how much it depends on whether you only install apps from within the Play store or not. But no, I wouldn't call it "surviving" if you get hit by ransomwhere and have to pay hundreds/thousands of dollars to restore your data, or lose your data.
- talldayo 2y ago> I've never heard of ransomware, botnets, or keyloggers on iPhones. Pegasus?
- talldayo 2y agoThere are legitimate concerns for user privacy with any third-party integration, including OpenAI which is why Apple asks you before sending a request to ChatGPT. They solved this problem already, and I guess they want to try and hold EU users over a barrel by claiming interoperability is impossible or something. Seriously, what kind of fearmongering can Apple push that doesn't make you side-eye the OpenAI integration even more?
- happyopossum 2y ago> There are legitimate concerns for user privacy with any third-party integration, including OpenAI which is why Apple asks you before sending a request to ChatGPT Right - which is why the ChatGPT integration is such a small part of the total Ai/LLM capabilities they announced, and they've loudly and publicly announced that it will support other 3rd parties in the future. Buuuuut - what happens if/when the EU decides the DMA requires Apple to open up their Private Cloud and on-device models to 3rd party replacement?
- ongy 2y agoThen people gain options. Some of them might be worse for privacy, but if they offer better (or cheaper, which can be a quality) features, that's up to people. If this was "the olden days", it would be a legitimate concern. But mobile OSs have long forced Apps to request permission to use various features explicitely and fall back graciously when some aren't provided. So outside security concerns that exist either way, they really can only claim to care about misinformed users.
- buildbot 2y agoIt's literally a spyware API in the hands of a 3rd party - the options here for misinformed users are critically dangerous. Recall was seen as 1st party spyware, Apple has more privacy trust and their implementation is very secure. Allowing Bob's AI screen reader to access the same total file/device access is very scary.
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- dartos 2y agoI don’t think they’re using openai. Didn’t they say they have models running on-device?
- cobbal 2y agoThey have both. In the demos they were sending select complex tasks out to chatgpt with a large UI alert confirming the data was leaving Apple's walled garden.
- jimbobthrowawy 2y agoThey dealt with this for third-party keyboards by barring them from connecting to the internet, they could do something similar to replacement on-device models. Even if that meant the "ask chatgpt" option wouldn't be available in the EU. I think they're more motivated by trying to scaremonger about the DMA, in much the same way they and others did about GDPR.
- Alupis 2y ago> The spite wars continue There are consequences to regulations/legislation. You can't have it both ways. News at 11... The privacy concerns are real, and EU regulations have teeth. No matter how iron-clad Apple's agreement is with OpenAI, it's still a significant liability since data protection and the rest that comes with this tech is outside of Apple's control. So now EU citizens don't get to play with this new feature. It's pretty simple.
- groestl 2y ago> and EU regulations have teeth As someone who has been involved in this journey from the beginning, essentially starting from a point akin to "fuck the EU, they're laughably ignorable" it's really interesting to read this sentence. We can work with that.
- Alupis 2y ago> essentially starting from a point akin to "fuck the EU, they're laughably ignorable" it's really interesting to read this sentence If you don't have a physical presence within the EU, you can and probably should ignore their laws/regulations. There's very little if anything they can do to you. This includes GDPR and other "viral" laws. EU citizens seem to believe their laws apply around the world - they do not. If you have a physical presence within the EU, like Apple does, then you cannot afford to be flippant with EU laws and regulations. They have real teeth, as you would expect for any country you have a physical presence in. Just as Apple cannot ignore US law since they are based here, they cannot ignore EU law since they are also based there. EU regulations have consequences - both good and bad. If Apple cannot guarantee compliance with EU regulations/laws, then they will have to remove or limit features that might get them into trouble. If EU citizens want this feature, then the regulations would need to change. It cannot be more simple than this. A lot of people enjoy eating the cake these days...
- groestl 2y ago> both good and bad Not arguing against that. The first thing is to be able to steer. And then you can steer in the right direction. So I'm glad it seems we'll finally be able to steer. Now we can figure out where exactly we want to end up.
- swat535 2y agoThere is nothing spiteful here, Apple's team has done an analysis and came to the conclusion that they can't reliably rollout this feature and be compliant with the EU regulations, which is the intended purpose of the regulation in the first place. I'm not being snarky but you should be celebrating this since it's working as intended. I think it's a healthy sign when big tech companies are forced to a take pause before releasing a feature to masses.
- helsinkiandrew 2y ago> “We are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security,” Apple said in a statement. Apart from the “security concerns” of allowing use of non Apple services it will be interesting to hear the specifics of these. I thought most AI features were being released in American English before other locales in 2025 anyway - this does sound like an excuse to get the public to put pressure on the EU
- jdminhbg 2y ago> Apart from the “security concerns” of allowing use of non Apple services I would think that if the EU requires Apple to allow third parties to use the new screen sharing APIs with the same privileges, that would be a security concern.
- evbogue 2y agoI kind of figure if I'm sharing a constant stream of screenshots of my screen with one company why not share them with every company? Might as well send it to the hackers too, I guess. This way I can have more AIs analyzing my screen.
- jdminhbg 2y agoI'm pretty sure that SharePlay screensharing is encrypted like FaceTime is, so I don't think you're sharing that stream of screenshots with Apple by using it. Their concern would be that if you allow third parties to use that API, they might stream your screen elsewhere.
- evbogue 2y agoMy jest was aimed at Siri's Apple Intelligence (AI) upcoming Onscreen Awareness. I'd like to also share my screenshots stream to be analyzed Microsoft AI's Copilot+ Recall feature for ultimate AI analysis and any other company that wants to send my screen to AI. Alphabet Intelligence? Sign my screen up!
- Hamuko 2y ago>The company announced Friday it would block the release of [...] iPhone Mirroring [...] from users in the EU this year, because the Digital Markets Act allegedly forces it to downgrade the security of its products and services. Huh?
- buildbot 2y agoThey might be forced into supporting that feature for non-iPhones or non-macs?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 2y agoBecause the DMA could force it to interoperate with third-party software that could also mirror it for users, which would allow third parties to spy on your screen. The logic here is pretty straightforward, really. You might disagree, but the legal concern here is not confusing.
- yokoprime 2y agoExtorsion won’t help Apple, people will just use other services or platforms
- darth_avocado 2y agoLike? The regulatory concerns will exist for ANY AI offering.
- isodev 2y agoAnd yet it doesn’t seem to be a problem for Samsung and others (who already released similar features in their previous generation devices).
- theshrike79 2y agoThey’re not big enough for EU to care. And if they pull out, it’ll hurt even more because they make everything under the sun.
- darth_avocado 2y agoSamsung has AI features?
- masto 2y agoEU: "Don't threaten us with a good time."
- kmlx 2y ago[flagged]
- codingcodingboy 2y agoDeficits might be unmanageable already.
- mistrial9 2y agosentimental slop -- the USA has a teen mental health epidemic, plastics trash in the waterways, tire residue in the fresh water, and many other avoidable woes.. 100x for China. In a longer time frame, pushback is healthy for stability
- russdpale 2y agoNot just plastics in the waterways, but in our brains and even our dicks apparently.
- bjornlouser 2y ago"In a longer time frame, pushback is healthy for stability" Yes, thank god for the adults in the room giving us our cookie prompts... such foresight!
- Nasrudith 2y agoDon't be so smug about it, plastics in the waterways and tire residue in the fresh water are global problems.
- riddlemethat 2y agoAs an American, my perception is that Europeans work to live while those of us in the States live to work; the highest crime in America is hurting the rich, and the highest crime in Europe is hurting the working class.
- russdpale 2y ago> I don’t know what the endgame is. Well that is your first problem, politics is not an "end game".
- tahoeskibum 2y agoThere is an old saying: US innovates, China replicates and EU regulates.
- spideymans 2y agoEU will regulate themselves straight out of economic productivity.
- lm28469 2y agoYeah and we regulate ourself straight into liveable working conditions, public healthcare, paid vacations, parental leaves and all other kinds of really really nasty communist nightmares
- montagg 2y agoNot a bad tradeoff imo. But it is a tradeoff.
- lm28469 2y agoOf course, that's what politics are for: making societal decisions, some are good for businesses, some are good for people btw the iphone has ±30% of the EU market, in the US they're closer to 60%. Mac represents ±7% of computer sales in Europe, ±15% in the US
- profeatur 2y ago>liveable work conditions How does low pay affect the “liveability” of work conditions? A waitress in the US makes as much or more than a software engineer in most of the EU. While the EU worker may receive more vacation time, and while he certainly has better personal financial skills (poverty will do that to you), he has no path towards a better future. A blue collar American worker, in the (increasingly unlikely) event that he chooses to manage his money well, can end up wealthy. A European who isn’t born wealthy will never become wealthy. >public healthcare Which everyone avoids, if they can afford it. The private system is really good though. >parental leave Because of the cost and risk of employing someone in the EU, when an employee takes maternity leave it’s the other employees who end up having to do the missing employee’s work. This is especially true with small businesses. >communist nightmare Over-socialized neo-feudal peasants who embrace their own impoverishment because they’ve been convinced that they’re superior to everyone else is pretty dystopian.
- selectodude 2y agoThe regulations around AI in the European Union are not well formed. The EU has shown that they will regulate things years later and impose massive fines and business costs. The EU also happens to be Apple’s least profitable market, and one that isn’t going to be growing over the next two decades. There’s just no reason to get involved over there. It’s not worth the risk.
- 1oooqooq 2y agothis have nothing to do with ai regulations. that's not how politics work. if they are holding on ai (what can move the government) they are likely wanting leverage on something else (paired sale, charger standardization, who knows). it's definitely things that are costing them profits already.
- talldayo 2y ago> The EU has shown that they will regulate things years later and impose massive fines and business costs. If that makes the EU look bad, imagine how goddamn incompetent the US regulators look right now.
- russdpale 2y agoCorrupt, that is how US regulators look, and everyone knows it. But this is the website that is spawning far right fascists who are advocating for political violence in the bay area, so I don't think you will get a lot of reasonable takes here.
- Nasrudith 2y agoUmm... where exactly? Politically I've mostly seen a growing infestation of very lost communists who forget they are at a venture capital backed website.
- selectodude 2y agoIt has nothing to do with the US. EU regulations are simultaneously unclear and very aggressive. There is significant business risk to operating there as a multi-national. It’s becoming a region that is profitable enough to exist in but not to invest in and Apple is declining the regulatory risk of introducing AI there. Some companies will go for it. Apple is too risk averse. Simple as that.
- 1oooqooq 2y agoNice strategic bluff! eu hold and they lose sales: "we will suffer for our users. ai will work on eu devices" eu relax regulations: obvious win. eu hold and sales keep rising: saves a ton of server costs and blame the government. it's a win-win-don't-lose
- e38383 2y agoI can totally understand why Apple is doing this. And I hate it. Mostly because the regulations are not technical enough to get followed within soft- and hardware. The EU is just preventing any (most, maybe just a few, but „any“ from my perspective) new (consumer) technology now.
- lambdas 2y agoI’d rather have to wait a while for shiny new feature, than dive head first into the unknown. We made that mistake with social media, not taking it seriously enough. I can wait a hot minute for my iPhone to summarise paragraphs whilst we try and avoid rampant, democracy breaking technology 2.0.
- Nasrudith 2y agoThe only 'democracy breaking' I see with social media is all of the incumbents not wanting to deal with opposition and tossing around preposterous rhetoric like it was water in the ocean.
- ErneX 2y agoYeah it’s great our EU bureaucrats are protecting us from evil innovations /s And also this: https://sdw.space/europe-wants-to-end-encryption/ https://sdw.space/europe-wants-to-end-encryption/
- IMTDb 2y ago> I’d rather have to wait a while for shiny new feature, than dive head first into the unknown. Is there a possible world where that is your choice and that vision is not imposed on me ? I fully respect your point of view and strongly believe you should have that option at your disposal. But I also feel like having an AI model running on my (private) device should be an option available to me if I want to.
- r00fus 2y agoYou might never get it. Essentially Apple is saying they will need to negotiate with the EU to confirm they can add functionality without being found liable later on. That negotiation could end up in an impasse.
- spideymans 2y agoOver the years, overregulation will continue to lock the EU out of bleeding-edge technologies. Every feature, every website, every innovation that doesn’t launch in the EU further plunges the bloc into technological irrelevance.
- readyman 2y ago[dead]
- dmix 2y agoIt also often impacts more than the EU, we still have cookie banners on websites globally because EU came up with a good-intentions idea when 3rd party tracking ad cookies were a major privacy concern. But like a lot of regulations they stick after the world changes/adapts. Now 3rd party cookies are officially dying out at the browser level and browser fingerprinting has long ago eliminated any privacy gain of cookie banners (unless you care about some first party cookie on a site that can already track you across pages server side, or use URL identifiers and other JS/AJAX). Yet annoying non-standardized, sometimes mandatory, modals before you can read a news article or blog post persist for non EU internet users...
- pocketarc 2y ago> sometimes mandatory This is definitely a bit off-topic compared to the article, but it's worth noting that those modals are there to obtain consent to store and use your personal data, and aren't specifically related to cookies (anymore), but the GDPR. If the news website didn't store personally identifying information about you (anywhere! not just in cookies), it wouldn't have to obtain consent, and wouldn't need any modals. I think the most annoying part of the regulation has been its lack of enforcement, because it has led to a weird sort of complacency where there's no clear knowledge of what is and isn't required, and then websites half-ass the banner (for example, they should be making it as easy to click Reject as it is to click Accept, not sending you down a dark pattern of checkboxes and stuff), or throw up a banner just to say they have one, even if they don't need it (I've seen that!). So we get the worst of both worlds: bad modals that don't even do what they're supposed to, and no enforcement to correct any of it.
- 2233 2y agoI am software engineer form the eu and I hat everything they doing in tech. Really considering learning.
- kredd 2y agoOut of curiosity, what about the Chinese market? It’s Apple’s third biggest market, and my assumption is since ChatGPT is banned there, they’ll need to work with some local AI companies to deliver the announced features.
- qwerty456127 2y ago> since ChatGPT is banned there, they’ll need to work with some local AI companies to deliver the announced features. Why? Locally-runnable models like LLama3 already work almost as good as ChatGPT.
- moogly 2y agohttps://archive.ph/4aCFY https://archive.ph/4aCFY TL;DR: reports that there are talks with Baidu, Alibaba, Baichuan AI
- hexo 2y agogood
- chucke1992 2y agoThe bigger question if it will affect Apple's sales in the region.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y agoIf guess it won’t affect anything. We have the same phone wars as everyone else: Samsung/Apple, Android/iOS, etc.
- chucke1992 2y agobut that's the thing - the whole point of AI for Apple is to try to improve the stagnating iPhone sales. I wonder if it will lead to iPhone losing some marketshare in EU due to that.
- cdme 2y agoMaybe they could just not roll it out at all.
- qwerty456127 2y agoNice. Indeed I don't want any AI integrated in my computer/phone OS. I like AI but it should be a separate app, preferably open-source, cloud-independent and well-configurable.
- vletal 2y agoI do not get it. If they are really into "private cloud", "your data belongs to you", ... They should be compliant out of the box. This decreases my trust in Apple.
- jedberg 2y agoIt's the other way around. They are worried they will be forced to open their privacy to third parties who could circumvent their privacy controls.
- TheLoafOfBread 2y agoThen it could be said, that their privacy control does not work, when you need to rely on security through obscurity.
- jedberg 2y agoIt’s not security by obscurity. The law makes Apple turn over the keys to third parties. You can’t secure your house if the law requires you to open the door to anyone who asks.
- isodev 2y agoApple throwing a tantrum like this doesn’t seem like a winning strategy. It’s a giant finger for devs and consumers in Europe.
- Rinzler89 2y ago>It’s a giant finger for devs and consumers in Europe. If EU would have a VC sector anywhere near the US or even Chinese ones, this is actually the perfect time and market opportunity for a local EU competitor to come out and launch a privacy focused smartphone that's compliant with local market regulations and also includes the AI features that Apple refuses to release out of spite. Apple only does shit like this because they know that the alternatives EU has in the consumer facing smartphone tech space is weak AF and poses no significant competition and no threat to them, unlike in China where Huawei and Xiaomi are ready to pounce if Apple were to slip. Regulations are good, but having domestic alternative competitors is even better, and the EU is lacking here and Apple knows this hence it can play chicken.
- janandonly 2y agoI guess many more will want to identify themselves as European now. Jokes aside, this feels like Apple’s effort to jab at the EU market for forcing them to allow other App stores and forcing RCS on them.
- nar001 2y agoRCS was China, not the EU
- acedTrex 2y agoThis was expected, multinationals have always offered a china specific product. Now there are 3 primary markets/product groupings. China, The US and the EU.
- akmarinov 2y agoGreat way to lose EU market share, their third largest market
- akmarinov 2y agoI would happily trade this for them dropping the Core technology fee and last say on what third party store apps can run on phones via notarization
- theshrike79 2y ago> Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these [new] features -- iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence -- to our EU users this year. Clearly Apple is worried that DMA will force them to open an API to do those things with a random 3rd party phone. And Apple doesn’t want to compromise on security to achieve it - nor do the work needed to create an open API for all that.
- ppetty 2y agoI’m more surprised that it’s taken this long for a big bad tech company (or companies) to exclude software or hardware releases to the EU. No matter how much of a hit to their (very large) bottom line, Apple or any company should be welcome to skip the EU if they se fit to go that route. I'm not sure Apple’s really out of line to do this either [1] … aybe they’ll never completely pull out of the EU, but if they do maybe that’s also the goal of the EU: to get EU based companies a chance? All it takes now is for Apple to see pulling out as a win-win. [1}: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/eff-tells-eu-commission-dont-break-encryption https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/eff-tells-eu-commissio...
- johnnyanmac 2y ago> No matter how much of a hit to their (very large) bottom line, Apple or any company should be welcome to skip the EU if they se fit to go that route It is a massive hit, though. Not just in Financials over missing millions of users, but in many other indirect ways regarding taxes, overseas relations, resources, and competition. You don't want to just give all that to some competitor who will take the time to bend over backwards for the EU. SKUs is also a huge manufacturing cost as well. If you've worked in GPU programming you know the sheer hit in performance that branching can cause (without a lot of smart planning). It's the exact same with factories, but on a scale of months instead of seconds.
- mrtksn 2y agoChina, India and Russia were already protective of their space and EU was the only large open market where the American tech giants were able to operate freely. Then EU went protective too but not by banning but making set of rules. An American company disregarding the European rules wouldn't be received nicely, Europe is keeping its market open just says follow the rules that we put in place so we don't have to ban foreign tech like China and the USA did. I don't see Europeans siding with the American companies on this, if it becomes a conflict it may easily end the same way it ends in China and the USA: Banning foreign owned companies operating in certain industries due to national security reasons. Have you heard about the rise of far-right in the EU? These right wingers are not the same as the American ones, they don't intent to make America Great again but to make Europe great again. They don't obsess with abortion and stuff but with foreign influence and the only reason some of these are sympathetic to Russia is because they see it as "enemy of their enemy, America". Even in UK there's non-negligible anti-Americanism and the lefties(among which anti-Americanism is more widespread) are about to take power. If Trump wins the elections and the USA insulates itself as he promises, you can reasonably expect to see the market of Apple and all other tech companies dropping to US-only. The EU smartphone market will be filled with Korean/Chinese brands who will be willing to cooperate, likely even partnering with local capital to come up with European brands in this. But who knows, a lot can change with the wars and political realignment going on. It's also possible for Europe to completely give up in exchange of protection but that seems less likely as the US is pushing in the other direction.
- 727564797069706 2y agoHaters gonna hate, EU's gonna regulate. And I support it. Big tech cries crocodile tears and then makes their products compatible with EU regulations anyway.
- 1f60c 2y agoThe EU is already falling behind in the AI revolution, and now this. I love the EU, but is there any EU tech regulation that actually had the intended effect?
- switch007 2y agoWhat if they don't want to be in the race? Will their civilization fall down like the Roman empire? People talk about AI as if it were literally water
- Luker88 2y agoI get the debate over AI, since that is a central repository of everything, but what is the problem of treating screen sharing with the same permission as -for example- the cameras? an app could give permission to be shared, and it definitely should receive user permission to get the stream
- switch007 2y agoIt's always entertaining to watch Americans getting confused why the whole world doesn't want what they create. It's honestly pointless trying to explain another country's point of view as it's like talking to a brick wall
- cbeach 2y agoWill the UK get the new features? Fingers crossed.