Apple: EU iPhone and iPad won’t get Siri AI at iOS 27 launch, cites Digital Markets Act

Apple says European Union users on iPhone and iPad will not get its new Siri AI features when iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 launch later this year, blaming the delay on the EU’s Digital Markets Act, the bloc’s competition law for large tech “gatekeeper” platforms.

In a Newsroom update published June 8, Apple said it “will not be able to ship Siri AI in the European Union with the release of iOS 27 and iPadOS 27.” The company said the feature will still launch in the EU on macOS 27, visionOS 27 and watchOS 27, creating a split rollout by device. Apple also said developers located in the EU will not be able to test or use the new Siri AI features for their apps on iOS and iPadOS when those operating systems are released. Apple’s footnote defined the EU as the bloc’s 27 member states.

“We’re deeply disappointed that our EU users won’t have Siri AI on iPhone or iPad when we share our new software releases later this year,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, said in the update.

Apple said the holdup follows months of discussions with EU regulators over how the company could offer Siri AI on iPhone and iPad while also supporting rival virtual assistants under the DMA. According to Apple’s description of those talks, regulators did not accept any of its proposed solutions, including an approach Apple called “Trusted System Agent” and a gradual 18-month rollout. Apple further said the European Commission’s interpretation of the law would require it to let third-party virtual assistants directly access users’ private data and control other installed apps once Siri AI is available in the EU on iPhone and iPad.

Apple said that access, in its view, could extend to reading and sending messages, making purchases, accessing files and carrying out actions across apps. The company framed that as a privacy and security risk. Apple’s description of the Commission’s position was published in its own update, and the source material did not identify a contemporaneous public European Commission statement repeating those claims.

The dispute sits inside a broader EU regulatory push. The Digital Markets Act, formally Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, is designed to curb the power of large online platforms the EU designates as gatekeepers, and the law explicitly includes virtual assistants among the services it can cover. In an April 28, 2026 review of the law, the European Commission said it was actively assessing how the DMA applies to AI and virtual assistants and was working with the European Data Protection Board on guidance about how the law interacts with EU privacy rules.

Apple has already been under DMA pressure. The Commission adopted binding interoperability specification decisions in March 2025 and fined Apple 500 million euros in April 2025 over anti-steering rules, underscoring that the latest clash comes amid an existing enforcement fight between the company and EU regulators.

For consumers and app makers, the practical effect is immediate: later this year, EU users will see Siri AI arrive on Mac, Apple Watch and Vision devices, but not on iPhones and iPads, while developers in the EU will also be blocked from testing those new Siri AI tools for iOS and iPadOS apps at launch.