Report from Reuters
In Brief – Apple is harshly critical of the set of directives compiled by the European Commission (EC) antitrust regulators directing Google to give AI service providers access to a wide range of Android functions. The Draft Measures, released in April, are the product of a Digital Markets Act (DMA) specification proceeding in which the regulators will direct Google on how they should comply with the law by giving third-party AI developers access to Android features and apps in the same manner as Google’s Gemini AI. Google has argued that these requirements could bypass important safeguards designed to protect users. Apple likewise warns that the draft measures could weaken privacy, security, device integrity, and user safety, especially given the unpredictability of AI systems. Apple also directly challenged the EU regulator’s technical expertise. “The EC is redesigning an OS (operating system). It is substituting judgments made by Google’s engineers for its own judgment based on less than three months of work.”
Context – “Specification proceedings” are a regulatory process to develop utility-style rules for a gatekeeper platform to comply with their interoperability obligations under the DMA. Apple is two years into a pair of DMA specification proceedings directing it on how to give peripherals competitors, such as for smart watches and headphones, full access to iPhone and iOS capabilities. The company continues to argue that the demands harm user experience and threaten privacy. Google is likewise subject to two such proceedings, with rules also being developed to give AI chatbot providers access to anonymized Google search data, including queries, ranking, clicks and views. The Commission’s antitrust authority appears focused on giving third-party AI developers, including emerging giant like OpenAI, unfettered access to the top platforms, such as recently objecting to Meta’s plan to charge chatbot competitors a per-message fee to operate over the WhatsApp platform, indicating that all AI chatbots should be given the same access to WhatsApp as Meta’s own AI services.