Siri AI Held Hostage: Apple and the EU Escalate Their Regulatory Cold War

In a formal statement, Apple said it "isn't currently able to launch Siri AI on iPhones, Apple Watches or iPads in the European Union" because it says EU regulators rejected every solution it proposed over several months of discussions .

The Compromise That Wasn’t: Apple’s Trusted System Agent

To square the circle, Apple designed a new middleware framework it called the Trusted System Agent. The idea was to create an intermediary layer that would allow competing virtual assistants to access the same device features and capabilities as Siri AI, but through a controlled, privacy-preserving gatekeeper that Apple would manage . The company coupled this architecture with specific APIs to try to give competitors functional feature parity with Siri AI while maintaining a security barrier .

The European Commission was not convinced and ultimately rejected the proposal .

Apple then took a different tack and requested a formal 18-month exemption from the DMA’s interoperability obligations. The goal was to buy engineering time to build out the Trusted System Agent and roll it out gradually in the EU while still launching Siri AI for users in the interim .

The Commission rejected that request outright. Spokesperson Thomas Regnier stated: "European law is not negotiable. Apple wanted an exemption" .

The EU’s Counterargument: Nothing is Stopping a Compliant Launch

Brussels’ reply is blunt: the DMA does not ban new products. It only requires that dominant gatekeepers like Apple open up their platforms fairly. The Commission’s position is that Apple was perfectly free to launch Siri AI in the EU at any time—provided it built the compliance into the product.

Regnier delivered the Commission's summary point-blank: "The choice not to deploy Siri AI within the EU rests solely with Apple" . He added that "absolutely nothing in the DMA prohibits Apple from introducing new products in the EU" .

The Commission argues that instead of developing an interoperability solution that respects the DMA, Apple sought a pure waiver from its legal obligations . The EU says the company had ample time and opportunity to design a DMA-compatible version of Siri AI and chose not to .

Platform-by-Platform: What’s Blocked and What’s Not

The dispute’s impact follows a deliberate legal boundary. The DMA designates Apple’s iOS and iPadOS as core platform services, making them fully subject to interoperability rules. Apple’s macOS, watchOS, and visionOS are not designated as gatekeeper platforms, so Siri AI will ship there even in the EU .

Here is how availability breaks down:

Apple also noted that users on a Mac running macOS 27 in the EU can still use Siri AI, which underlines that the legal trigger is the specific gatekeeper designation—not a blanket EU-wide block .

A Rerun of the 2024 Apple Intelligence Standoff

This is not the first time Apple has used this playbook. In June 2024, Apple announced it would block Apple Intelligence, iPhone Mirroring, and SharePlay Screen Sharing from EU users entirely, again citing DMA interoperability requirements . At the time, the company said the DMA’s rules "could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security" .

Those 2024 features eventually did arrive inside the EU, but only in limited form and after months of additional engineering work . Siri AI now appears to be following the same pattern: a high-profile delay paired with a public attempt to reframe regulatory requirements as a product blockade.

The standoff also echoes Apple’s earlier, quieter admission that the DMA was causing it to delay other AI-enabled features, including AirPods Live Translation, because making them work on non-Apple products required significant engineering time .

Industry observers point out that this repeat tactic carries a real financial risk. If Apple launched Siri AI in Europe without ensuring equal access for competing assistants, the EU could in theory levy fines of up to 10% of Apple’s global annual revenue, rising to 20% for repeated infringements .

For now, EU iPhone and iPad users face an indefinite wait. Apple says it does not have a timeline for Siri AI’s arrival on those platforms, and the European Commission is giving no ground on the principle that gatekeeper compliance must come before new feature rollouts.