As part of its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month, Apple announced its own set of AI-based services that will start rolling out with iOS 18. Apple Intelligence, via a partnership with OpenAI, will offer services like an AI-based image creator, a way for users to write or rewrite emails, and even create custom emojis with just a few text prompts, which the company called Genmoji.
While Apple Intelligence features, or at least some of them, are expected to be made available later this fall in the United States and other parts of the world, they won"t be launched in the European Union, at least not immediately. Bloomberg, via Yahoo, has confirmed that those features and others planned for iOS 18, are being delayed in that region.
"The reason is the EU"s Digital Markets Act, which became official in 2022. Apple was named as a "gatekeeper" company under the DMA in 2023. Under the terms of the act, gatekeeper companies cannot offer certain services over those of rival companies.
An Apple spokesperson sent Bloomberg a fairly vague statement about this situation. It said:
We are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security,
In addition to Apple Intelligence, Apple will not offer another iOS 17 feature for users in the EU this fall, which is SharePlay Screen Sharing. It also won"t offer iPhone Mirroring, which is a new feature that is coming to Mac platforms with the upcoming macOS Sequoia release.
There"s no word on when, or even if, any of these heavily hyped features will be coming to iOS and Mac users in the EU. It certainly will be a huge setback for Apple if it cannot offer its major new addition to iOS 18 in that huge market.