Android AI Violates DMA
The issue before the commission currently is the built-in advantage for Gemini on Android. When you turn on any Google-powered Android phone, Gemini is already there and gets special treatment at the system level. The European Commission is taking aim at the lack of features available to third-party AI services. The commission believes that there are too many experiences on Android that only work with Google’s Gemini AI, and as a gatekeeper, Google must change that.
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European regulators are proposing several broad changes to the way AI tools operate on Android phones. Some of this is straightforward, like allowing third-party AI tools to be invoked system-wide via hot words or button presses. This might also include allowing AI tools to view screen context when the user opens them.
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Many of the Gemini AI features in Android, including Magic Cue, rely on running local models, and Google has been slow to allow third parties the system access to make that work effectively. So the EU is also suggesting a mandate that would ensure developers have the necessary hardware access to run local models “with high levels of performance, availability and responsiveness.”
Via John Gruber:
The difference between Google and Apple on this front is that Google just blazed ahead and shipped Gemini integrated into Android in the EU, and is now facing compliance problems after shipping. (Ask forgiveness.) Apple isn’t shipping Siri AI in the EU in iOS 27, knowing that it’s going to be deemed non-compliant. (Ask permission.)
Previously:
Update (2026-07-17): Juli Clover:
The European Commission today formally ordered Google to give third-party AI services the same access to Android device features that Gemini has.
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The European Commission is giving Google a full year to implement changes that will meet the Digital Markets Act requirements, and that's before any legal appeals Google might make.
Google (via Ben Schoon):
This Android ruling threatens device security by granting external apps sensitive and powerful device permissions without these safeguards.
Update (2026-07-23): John Gruber (Mastodon):
They provide separate “Q&A” overviews of the guidance for Android AI interoperability and web search sharing, and the full guidance documents are PDFs (Case DMA.100220 for Android AI, Case DMA.100209 for web search).
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The EC is demanding that Google create APIs that allow third-party AI assistants to do everything Google Gemini does now[…]
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Also, in my reading, the EC is demanding that Google make available to third-party AI assistants all information in Google’s own apps (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Maps, etc.) that Gemini has access to.
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Apple unfortunately hasn’t shared any technical details describing its proposal for a “Trusted System Agent” that it shared with the EC last year. But whatever Apple’s vision for the Trusted System Agent is, I don’t see how the EC would deem it compliant with the DMA if they want from Apple anything close to what they are now demanding from Google.
I don’t know what will come of this, but I’m pleased to see it in the sense that it is logically coherent. The TSA seems like a way to give the appearance of doing something without actually solving the problem. Like Gruber, I don’t really see why Google would want to comply with this rather than taking their Gemini ball and going home. Unlike Gruber, I don’t find it scary to let users opt into sharing their data and background time with apps of their choosing. I don’t like software design by government committee, but it seems less bad than further entrenching an unfettered monopoly. Maybe this could have been avoided if Google had developed its own reasonable solution instead of shipping something that was obviously not compliant.
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There is no material difference between Google and Apple's position. Gruber is just Apple-fanboying at this point. Apple doesn't actually want to do anything the EU would force it to do, which is make AI bot slop agnostic on dominant phone platforms. The end result is the same: on both Apple and Google's platforms, AI bot slop is locked to whatever the platform gives you.
I'm so tired of Apple weblogs fawning all over themselves about slight differences in Apple's actions compared to other companies. At this point, Apple is exactly the same as anyone else. It's a generic tech company, with generic tech, that is pushing buggy features on a yearly release cadence because of agile sprint planning which supposedly improves performance, and that also wants to cash in on the AI bot slop gold rush. Everything that Apple ever used to differentiate itself from other tech companies has been lost.
@Simone I do think the forgiveness/permission point is a good one. Not sure what the end result will be, but the current situation is very different in that Android phones do have Gemini in the EU.
"Asking permission" is a very rosy way to frame withholding multiple features (of which Siri AI is just one) as a hardball negotiating tactic against the EU. This same action can be portrayed as either submissive or strident, depending on which view is more advantageous to Apple at any moment.
I don't agree on the permission/forgiveness point. Apple has repeatedly not asked permission in cases that probably violate the DMA, like the Siri ChatGPT integration, promoting Apple Fitness+ in the OS settings (I don't think gatekeepers are allowed to benefit their own services in this way), Apple Intelligence promotion in the settings, and that on top of all the existing violations where they have mostly done malicious compliance (third-party app stores, etc.).
It seems that Apple picks features that they perceive to be high value to users (iPhone Mirroring, non-braindead Siri) and then play the "we cannot roll this out because of the big bad EU" card to try to sway the sentiment of European iPhone users (and possibly the US administration).
Gruber is just doing their bidding and is not a reputable source when it comes to Apple and politics.
@Daniël I think Apple has been doing malicious compliance in other areas, so I think it’s only fair to note that they are being better in this narrow instance. I doubt they’ve suddenly grown respect for the law, so do think it’s likely part of a sway strategy.
Apple isn’t shipping Siri AI into the EU for the same reason it didn’t ship Apple Intelligence into the EU: it currently only supports English, and of the 450m people in the EU only 5m Irish people speak it as their first language.
Once Apple added French, Spanish etc language support, it turned out they realised they actually could ship Apple Intelligence (such as it was) to the EU after all…
Indeed it was release to the EU and Brazil at exactly the same time: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-intelligence-expands-to-more-languages-and-regions-in-april/
Gruber’s biases when it comes to both Apple and the EU make him an extraordinarily unreliable source on this topic.
Just last week or so, Gruber was ecstatic about how the native ChatGPT app can totally control his Mac and access everything, and adamant that this made the Mac a superior platform. Now he's making the opposite argument. I wonder what changed his mind in such a small amount of time.
@Plume I think Gruber’s position is that mobile is different from Mac, and so Apple/Google should be allowed to make mobile closed—which is a safety/simplicity benefit to those users—even though the desktop is more open. This doesn’t make much sense to me—why would the people who use both want them to behave differently—but I think he’s been consistent about it.
The specific arguments he makes in that linked article have nothing to do with platforms, though. How does he find access to data "breathtaking in scope" on Android when he's ecstatic that ChatGPT can access that same data on his Mac? It's the same data! How is it a wonderful advantage in one case and abominable in the other?
Also, he's specifically contradicting his earlier position on ChatGPT when he calls the Mac "a mess." If he thinks ChatGPT contributes to a "mess of third-party software running in the background", why was he so supportive of that same behavior last week?
