Apple’s flagship “Siri AI” upgrade is rolling out across much of the world this year — but not on iPhones and iPads in the European Union, where a regulatory clash over how open Apple’s ecosystem must be has brought deployment to a halt.

WWDC launch and the first delay

At Apple’s WWDC 2026, the company unveiled a rebuilt Siri AI, tightly woven into its platforms and billed as “private by design,” using on‑device processing and a system called Private Cloud Compute.¹ Soon after, Apple confirmed that when iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 ship later this year, Siri AI will not be available on iPhone or iPad in the EU — only on macOS, watchOS, and visionOS — marking the second time Apple Intelligence features have been delayed in Europe and this time with “no timeline” for release.⁴

Apple says EU regulators rejected “every proposal” it made over months to launch Siri AI while still supporting rival assistants.⁴ Senior software chief Craig Federighi complained that the European Commission’s “refusal to engage constructively on solutions that preserve privacy and security” left no path forward.⁴

Apple’s privacy-and-security argument

Apple argues that under what it calls an “extreme interpretation” of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), it would have to grant any virtual assistant direct access to users’ private data and the ability to control other apps “without the essential protections necessary to keep users and their data safe.”¹ The DMA’s interoperability rules would effectively require Apple to offer groups like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic similar deep system access to what Siri AI enjoys, including messages, photos, purchases, and cross‑app actions — “far too much access” in Apple’s view.³

To mitigate that, Apple proposed a “Trusted System Agent” to sit between outside AI agents and its systems, offering comparable capabilities but with more safeguards, to be rolled out over 18 months on a “gradually rolling” basis.³ Regulators rejected this and other ideas, Apple says.³

Brussels pushes back

EU officials counter that nothing in the DMA blocks Apple from launching Siri AI and that “EU law is non‑negotiable.”² The European Commission says the law does not prohibit new products and faults Apple for failing to develop compliant interoperability solutions, accusing the company of using security arguments to preserve its gatekeeper position and stifle competition.³

The result is a standoff: millions of EU iPhone and iPad users are being told they may not get Siri AI “anytime soon, if ever,”³ while Apple and Brussels test how far Europe’s landmark tech law can reshape one of the world’s most controlled software ecosystems.