Apple’s AI privacy trick could be the compromise the EU needs

09/10 20:15 - Apple’s AI privacy trick could be the compromise the EU needs
When it comes to consumer protections, Europe is following its own path. That may be visible in its quixotic-seeming decisions that allegedly prevent Apple from introducing Siri AI in the European Union. It’s time to begin to grapple with what those decisions mean. I think the EU has got it wrong in how it has chosen to enforce its Digital Markets Act against Apple. The refusal to figure out a mutually satisfactory way to apply the intent of the DMA on Apple’s business practices while protecting its stated values around privacy is a failure of imagination and diplomacy. Apple and Japan previously reached an agreement that achieved positive impacts for third-party developers while protecting the product design integrity and customer privacy the company and its customers care about. Prevention is not cure That lack of deal-finding in the EU is preventing the introduction of Apple Intelligence and Siri AI to customers in the trading bloc.  When it announced these AI features, Apple told us it had proposed some kind of technological fix that would provide third-party product makers, including AI product makers, with user information to drive their products while also protecting user privacy. Europe declined to work with Apple on those terms, which is why the company has not introduced Siri AI there.  European regulators would, of course, disagree with that account, but this is what has been suggested. What Apple’s privacy fix could look like More recently we got the chance to see what that kind of AI-enabling tech privacy protection might look like when Apple introduced Audio Intelligence, particularly Siri Recap. This relies on a semi-magical selection of complementary technologies that enable the feature while protecting personal privacy. It does this by analyzing audio in real time, summarizing it, removing personally identifiable data from it, and sending a vastly reduced and anonymized data set to the cloud for final processing. The idea here is that your data for the most part is only ever handled by your device, is not saved, and only just enough information is passed down the line.  I believe this hints at the technical approach Apple had hoped to build to protect Siri AI in the EU. Distilling and anonymizing personal data while still making it possible to run effective AI tools is the name of that game. Extending that approach to third parties and other domains — including video — will take time, which is what Apple asked Europe to provide. The EU, we’re told, didn’t budge. That’s a shame, in part because European customers won’t get to use Apple’s more private take on AI, but also because they will continue to find their data exposed to AI firms that are not focusing on privacy.  Europe wants its own AI I suspect Europe doesn’t mind that too much, because it is hoping to foster the evolution of its own AI solutions, rather than becoming even more reliant on US technology firms.  The EU is already investing heavily in tech sovereignty. Its TESTA-EIRIS system, for example, may have a silly name but is an attempt to build a regional, localized, sovereign communications infrastructure for European governments and institutions. This infrastructure will no doubt be used within the implementation of localized AI systems and services.  You cannot underestimate the drive to sovereign tech solutions; it’s an international movement and all about building national resilience and crisis independence. A 2025 McKinsey report showed that 71% of executives, investors, and government officials worldwide now see sovereign AI as an existential concern. That means many nations will be looking to deploy their own region-specific solutions. It also means Big Tech firms like Apple — or US frontier AI firms, given their market share — must identify new business practices that respect international differences. Surely there’s a middle ground? This inward-focused drive toward sovereign tech reflects a wider malaise in international relations. Ironically, it is one that might benefit from the kind of “private by design” approach Apple is pioneering with Audio Intelligence.  Will it be possible for Apple’s systems to use a tech like this to empower third-party systems while protecting personal privacy? If Apple achieves this, it should help sovereign tech deployment, as it builds in privacy at the end-user layer, which can then be picked up by whatever national AI solutions eventually emerge.  It probably isn’t enough for the EU sovereign vision, of course, but could be a positive compromise pending the creation of a viable European hardware solutions manufacturer, which seems a very, very, very long way away. But positive compromise doesn’t appear to have been the hallmark of Europe’s DMA dealings with Apple so far, which may well be why the latest word from Mark Gurman is that Europeans must expect to wait at least five more months, and potentially much longer, before they even hear a hint that the two sides have reached a rapprochement.  In the meantime, European users on mobile devices remain more likely to use Claude or ChatGPT than less popular EU-made AI services, such as Mistral. All without the kind of privacy protections in place Apple aspires to deliver.  Surely there’s a middle ground?  Surely Apple’s promised technology to enable AI while protecting privacy is something the EU would benefit from? Maybe the two sides should try to figure something out.  Now please subscribe to my daily, human-curated Apple-related news headline feed at The Core, or follow me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, or Mastodon. ...