Two stories about Siri have been circulating since 2024. One is about internal development setbacks that slowed Apple Intelligence features across all markets. That story is separate. This one is different: Apple has publicly stated that new Siri AI capabilities won’t be available to EU users with the upcoming iOS 27 release because the European Commission did not accept any of Apple’s proposed technical solutions for meeting the Digital Markets Act’s interoperability obligations while preserving user privacy. The cause here is regulatory architecture, not engineering status.
The DMA, formally Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, designates certain platform operators as “gatekeepers” and imposes obligations under Article 6 requiring them to allow third-party services to interoperate with their platform services. Apple is a designated gatekeeper. Apple’s position, per its public DMA page and reporting by MacRumors, is that meeting those requirements would compel the company to grant rival virtual assistants access to private user data and onscreen execution capabilities, a characterization the European Commission has not formally endorsed. The EC’s established DMA enforcement posture holds that designated gatekeepers are responsible for designing compliant services, and the Commission has not accepted technical complexity as grounds for exemption in prior enforcement actions.
One claim clearly belongs to Apple. The other reflects the Commission’s documented record.
Apple Siri AI in the EU: What Changed
That distinction matters for compliance teams at companies that aren’t Apple. The DMA’s interoperability mandate isn’t Apple-specific, it applies across all designated gatekeeper platforms, and AI features built on top of those platforms inherit the same compliance surface. Any AI company deploying voice, contextual, or on-device AI features through iOS, iPadOS, or other gatekeeper environments in the EU faces an analogous design question: does the feature’s data architecture satisfy interoperability obligations without requiring the kind of access Apple contends the Commission demands? The real question is whether your AI feature’s privacy model was designed with DMA Article 6 in mind, or whether it was designed for a pre-DMA platform environment and hasn’t been stress-tested against gatekeeper obligations.
The DMA is not the EU AI Act. Compliance teams should keep these instruments distinct. The EU AI Act governs AI system risk classification, documentation, and conformity assessment. The DMA governs platform interoperability and gatekeeper conduct. A feature that clears EU AI Act requirements can still be blocked by DMA interoperability obligations, and vice versa. Apple’s situation is a DMA enforcement dispute, not an AI Act compliance failure. For context on how the two instruments interact for AI deployers, see the hub’s EU AI Act compliance coverage.
Unanswered Questions
- Does your AI feature's data architecture satisfy DMA Article 6 interoperability obligations for the gatekeeper platform it runs on?
- Have you mapped which of your EU-market AI features sit inside a designated gatekeeper's platform environment?
- Has your legal or regulatory team reviewed the EC's enforcement posture on gatekeeper design responsibility in the context of your feature roadmap?
What to watch
Apple’s iOS 27 release is expected in fall 2026, an approximate timeline consistent with Apple’s standard release cycle. That date functions less as a formal regulatory deadline and more as a visibility marker, the point at which the EU’s Siri AI gap becomes visible to millions of users and the commercial and reputational stakes of the EC-Apple standoff become concrete. If the Commission moves to formal enforcement proceedings, it would represent one of the first gatekeeper AI deployment disputes to reach that stage under the DMA.
The catch is that the EC’s refusal-to-accommodate posture here sets an interpretive signal, not just a bilateral outcome. Other AI deployers operating on gatekeeper platforms should treat Apple’s experience as a compliance stress test their own architectures haven’t yet passed. The hub’s Technology pillar covers the developer-facing implications of this dispute, including what it means for SiriKit and App Intents integrations, at Apple Blocks Siri AI From EU iPhones and iPads.