Apple delays Siri AI in EU over digital markets rules

Apple’s next Siri AI rollout will skip iPhones and iPads in the European Union, turning the bloc’s digital rules into a visible product divide. The company said the feature will not ship with iOS 27 or iPadOS 27 in the EU because of the Digital Markets Act, even though EU users will still get Siri AI on macOS 27 and visionOS 27.

Apple said the problem is regulatory, not technical. The company said EU regulators did not accept its proposed solutions for bringing Siri AI to Europe while safely supporting other virtual assistants. Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, said the company was deeply disappointed that EU users would miss the feature on iPhone and iPad at launch and said Apple would keep engaging with regulators.

The dispute puts one of Apple’s most important AI bets directly in the frame. Siri AI is part of Apple Intelligence, the company’s broader push to catch up in the generative-AI race and position its devices as more capable personal assistants. For European consumers, that means the question is no longer abstract antitrust policy. It is whether a user in the EU gets the newest voice assistant tools on an iPhone or iPad when users elsewhere do.

The Digital Markets Act, introduced in 2022, was designed to reshape how major technology companies build and distribute products and services in Europe. Apple has already been forced to make other changes under the law, including user-choice and interoperability adjustments. The European Commission has also adopted decisions under the DMA spelling out measures Apple must take to comply with those interoperability obligations.

The company’s relationship with the law has already produced a major penalty. On 23 April 2025, the European Commission fined Apple €500 million for breaching the DMA’s anti-steering obligation. The Commission said Apple had violated that rule, underscoring how aggressively Brussels is willing to enforce the bloc’s platform laws.

Apple has previously warned that the DMA could affect the rollout of AI and other features in Europe, and the latest Siri delay fits that pattern. For Apple, the challenge is now twofold: satisfy regulators without undermining the product experience it wants to sell. For EU users, the result is immediate and concrete: the same Apple ecosystem will deliver the company’s flagship AI assistant on some devices and leave it off others.