Apple Intelligence Is Coming to EU iPhones After All

Apple Intelligence Is Coming to EU iPhones After All

Apple Intelligence launched worldwide in U.S. English yesterday, but if you’re an iPhone user in the E.U. or mainland China, I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing what all the hubbub is about. That’s because Apple’s AI is currently unavailable on phones or tablets in those regions—to use the new tech there, you'll need to do so on a Mac.

Apple previously blamed the E.U.’s DMA regulations for the restriction, saying releasing AI under its interoperability requirements “could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security.” But suddenly, the company’s tune has changed. It’s not quite clear why, but in an Irish Apple newsroom post, the iPhone maker now says “Apple Intelligence features will start to roll out to iPhone and iPad users in the E.U.” starting next April.

According to the post, the April release will include “many of the core features of Apple Intelligence, including Writing Tools, Genmoji, a redesigned Siri with richer language understanding, ChatGPT integration, and more.”

Whether Apple’s worked out a deal with the E.U. or whether the company is moving forward for some other reason isn’t clear, just as it wasn’t clear how much E.U. regulations were threatening Apple Intelligence in the first place. It’s possible the company could have released Apple Intelligence in Europe alongside the rest of the world and was simply holding back European AI out of an abundance of caution. Less generously, the withholding could've been intended as a way to apply pressure to the region. In the past, European regulators have insinuated that keeping Apple’s AI out of the E.U. was not entirely their decision, with a European commissioner calling Apple’s choice to halt Apple Intelligence’s European release a “stunning open declaration” of anticompetitive behavior. 

I've reached out to both Apple and the E.U. for clarification and will update this article when I hear back. Still, when the feature does launch in the region, it does sound like it will be almost entirely on par with the U.S. release (I’ve also asked Apple to clarify which features EU phones will and won’t get, and will include that information in updates as well).

As noted, Europeans do already have access to the full suite of Apple AI features, but only on supported Mac devices. They’ll need to update to macOS Sequoia 15.1 and set their device’s language to U.S. English first (under Settings -> General -> Language & Region), but that’s not a unique issue. Apple promises to add support for various other English dialects in December, including for Ireland, the U.K., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. Indian and Singaporean English and other languages will come over the course of the next year, with Apple confirming various European and Asian languages, and promising still others.

(If Asian language support has you excited for a release in mainland China, where Apple Intelligence has yet to even reach the Mac, that is unfortunately still not on the docket.)



* This article was originally published here

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Download All Your Media From Google Photos

Image
Cloud storage has changed the way we take care of our data. In the past, you needed to backup and transfer files between devices directly, or else you wouldn't have them in multiple locations. If you took photos on your iPhone or Android, for example, you'd often want to plug it into your computer to make sure those photos were both backed up and easily accessible for sharing with friends, family, and the internet at large. The problem is, we've changed the way we deal with data these days. If you plug your smartphone into your computer expecting to transfer all the photos and videos you see in your photos app of choice, you might be surprised to find that only a fraction of the images actually make their way to your PC. It's confusing, considering that media is accessible on the phone: Why can it just be a seamless transfer? Google Photos makes it confusing to know which images are stored on-device That's exactly what happened with Reddit user Spax123 , who took
Read more

The Best U.S. Cities for Tech Jobs (Aside From the Obvious)

Image
Working in tech no longer means having to live in one of a handful of increasingly unaffordable cities, like New York City, Seattle, Chicago, and San Francisco. Instead, as jobs involving artificial intelligence and product security, among other areas, continue to grow, cities that weren't previously considered tech hubs now offer opportunities for both tech-related employment and affordable living. Here are a few examples, compiled using data from job market reports and cities, as well as input from tech recruiters and hiring managers. Bentonville, Arkansas Perhaps best known for being Walmart's home city, Bentonville has been on the rise as a tech center for the last seven or eight years, according to Eóin O'Toole, a tech recruiter and managing partner at Riviera Partners . In addition to the big-box store giant, O'Toole says that there's a "surging ecosystem both directly and indirectly related to Walmart," as well as other major employers, like JB H
Read more

How to Choose Between Alexa and Google Assistant

Image
If you’re looking to have a hands-free experience with your smart home, you need a voice assistant. By merely talking in the direction of a device enabled with the assistant, you can get information about the weather, time, local businesses, or anything else from their knowledgbase. You can control smart devices or send an email or SMS, and it’s all done by interacting vocally with the assistant, who speaks in a human-ish way. There are three well-known voice assistants: Siri, which is exclusive to Apple devices, Alexa , which is operated by Amazon, and Google Assistant . Since people are generally Apple or Android loyalists , it makes sense that if you run Apple products, you’d stick with Siri for your assistant. For everyone else, which voice assistant should you choose: Alexa or Google?  When it comes to smart home technology, there are two factors to consider: the hub you’ll use to connect your smart devices so you can control them, and what voice assistants you might want to use
Read more