“If you think about it”wrote Jonny Evans on Computer World, “The beauty of Apple Intelligence is that it uses the information your device collects about you to function best. The risk however is that, under the DMA, the European Union insists that this information, even if it is on your device, must be handed over to competitors”. Simply put, the fear is that the Digital Markets Act will be brandished require Apple to release to third parties the information it has collected about Apple usersand that rivals exploit this information to improve their own products, even if in direct competition with those of Apple.
Beyond the validity – and justification – of these fears, there is another danger: “Apple is committed to keeping our information private and secure(…) as we have known since the invention of the internet, not all companies are ethical or reliable”Evans continues.
Regardless of Apple’s reasons, this is a radical change compared to how the Silicon Valley giants have always behaved. Up until now, Big Tech has always followed the motto “apologize, not ask for permission”: implementing innovations of all kinds without too many problems, only to then backtrack if the European Union – or someone else – threatened sanctions of various types (the last example is Meta’s attempt to train its artificial intelligences with our data).
It makes you wonder why Apple has decided to proceed with such zealgoing so far as to abandon the spread of its AI system even before the European Union had anything to say about it. And one also wonders why, instead of working together with the EU to find a solution, it preferred to announce to the whole world its decision to exclude Europe from its news.
Changing the cards on the table
The suspicion, ultimately, is that Apple is trying to change the game. Until now, the European Union has exploited the importance of its market (the Union, as a whole, is the second largest economy in the world) to regulate and fine. In order not to lose access to wealthy and numerous consumers, Big Tech has always adapted to the various GDPR (privacy), Digital Services and Markets Act (competition), AI Act (artificial intelligence).
