European users of iPhone and iPad will not have access to Siri AI when iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 ship later this year. Apple confirmed the situation in a formal newsroom post, attributing the absence to the Digital Markets Act and the European Commission’s refusal to accept Apple’s proposed compliance arrangements. There is no timeline for resolution on either side.
What Siri AI includes and who misses out
Siri AI is the rebuilt version of Siri announced at WWDC 2026, powered by Google’s Gemini models routed through Apple’s Private Cloud Compute infrastructure. The feature includes a persistent conversational interface, multi-step reasoning across apps, a dedicated conversation history app, an expanded Visual Intelligence experience, integrated writing tools, and Siri mode in the iPhone camera.
EU users will not have access to any of those capabilities on iPhone or iPad at launch. macOS 27 and visionOS 27 are not currently blocked, meaning users on those platforms in the EU will have access. Because Siri AI on watchOS 27 requires a paired iPhone with Siri AI enabled, EU Apple Watch users are also excluded by proxy.
What Apple proposed and why the Commission said no
Apple designed a compliance architecture called Trusted System Agent, intended to give competing virtual assistants equal access to the same platform capabilities that Siri AI uses, while preserving the privacy guarantees of Private Cloud Compute. Apple accompanied this with a request for an 18-month phased rollout window, arguing it needed time for independent AI assistants to integrate with the system before parity could be certified.
The Commission rejected both the Trusted System Agent architecture and the 18-month waiver. Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier stated publicly that “the decision not to roll out Siri AI in the EU is Apple’s and Apple’s only,” arguing that nothing in the DMA prohibits Apple from launching the feature. Apple’s position is that the Commission’s requirements, specifically the obligation to provide equal real-time access to competing assistants at the moment of Siri AI’s launch, made a privacy-preserving implementation technically impossible to deliver on that timeline.
Both sides have made their disagreement fully public. The Commission argues DMA compliance is straightforward. Apple argues the privacy architecture at the core of Private Cloud Compute cannot be simultaneously opened to third parties and kept secure at launch without an implementation runway. No independent technical assessment in the public record resolves the dispute.
The broader pattern
The Siri AI exclusion is not an isolated incident. The DMA’s interoperability requirements and the pace at which the Commission expects implementation have now caused or delayed feature rollouts from multiple major platforms in Europe. Google has faced similar DMA-driven feature delays. The practical effect for European users and organisations is that global feature releases increasingly arrive later in Europe than elsewhere, or not at all, as companies navigate legal risk under DMA before shipping.
That dynamic is worth naming clearly for European IT and procurement teams: when evaluating platform roadmaps, feature parity between EU and non-EU deployments is no longer a safe assumption for any platform covered by the DMA.
What this means for organisations managing Apple device fleets
For IT and security teams in Europe, the Siri AI absence on iOS 27 is settled for the foreseeable future. There is no indication of a resolution before the iOS 27 public release in autumn, and the tone of the public dispute suggests this will not close quietly in the interim.
Organisations that planned around Siri AI capabilities in mobile device policies, MDM configuration, accessibility assessments, or AI governance frameworks should treat those plans as deferred indefinitely. The features will not arrive at launch.
Separately, organisations operating in sectors subject to the EU AI Act’s August 2026 compliance deadline should note that the regulatory environment Apple is navigating is the same one that applies to their own AI deployments. The Commission’s position that technical constraints do not excuse compliance obligations is not one it applies exclusively to platform vendors.
If you want help assessing what the Siri AI exclusion means for your Apple device fleet, your MDM policies, or your broader approach to AI governance in a European regulatory environment, contact Excello Digital. We help organisations make technology decisions that remain defensible as platform and regulatory landscapes shift.