I don't want my apps that have AI implemented to be able to read my messages because Europe mandates feature parity. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For Apple it means building all the APIs that probably already exist but this time to be requested by apps, which would be a huge attack surface, even Apple's own apps suffers from security breaches (like Message before the switch to closed container execution). AI breaks the separation of concerns, which can lead to disastrous consequences.

EU has great intentions, and of course, feature parity should be offered so that competition can exist, but I don't find it crazy that it is more complicated on a product like that. As tech people things are very obvious to us but we need to remember that we are talking about a product used by everyone.

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layer8 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s not clear how it is significantly different from allowing apps access to your contacts, calendar, photos, and so on. And Apple doesn’t say that they merely need more time to properly implement it, the claim that they are unable to implement it without compromising privacy and security. And the latter I don’t really see, with the proper set of permissions presented in the way users are already used to.

As an Apple user I feel more patronized than empowered here.

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dwaite 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> It’s not clear how it is significantly different from allowing apps access to your contacts, calendar, photos, and so on

Those are allowed via contextual consent prompts, several of which are for specific contacts, specific photos you wish to share, and so on.

Examples of the level of access an AI agent has include:

1. To read all indexed personal data from every app installed on the device

2. To perform actions in every supporting app on the device on the user's behalf

3. To read the current displayed apps for additional context as well as sensor data like current location

If you were regulated such that you had to allow any organization this level of access, and if you were hand-tied in how much you could convey the seriousness of accepting that consent prompt to an ordinary end user, and felt that it would be you, not any legal authority, who would ultimately suffer the reputational and legal consequences for the results - what would your yes/no decision be on shipping the feature in that jurisdiction?

	▲	layer8 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		How is this substantially different from Safari extensions that can effectively see and act upon everything you do in the browser? One can imagine contextual prompts for all of the examples that you give, like which data sources and which apps the AI provider is given access to — similar to how you can choose for a Safari extension which websites it has access to — and for how long. That all seams reasonably implementable. You could even use multiple AI providers in parallel with different subsets of data and apps, which would allow you to compartementalize access by different providers in a way that isn't possible with Apple's AI. Such integration interfaces are necessary in the long run if we don't want to lock in our whole life to a singular combination of hardware, OS, and AI provider.

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bloppe an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The law does not require Apple to grant all permissions to all apps for all users. It just requires Apple to ask users if the user wants to grant elevated permissions to specific apps that they download. The user can always say "no", which should obviously be the default.

The situation is that Apple won't even allow users to grant elevated permissions to any 3rd party app, even if the user wants to.

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aucisson_masque 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> don't want my apps that have AI implemented to be able to read my messages because Europe mandates feature parit

App permissions.

Beside you don't have to install any third party app, I only have Google assistant installed on my Android.

I heard the same kind of talk when the eu forced apple to switch to USB C...

There is a real, strong, monopolistic issue with some American companies that their government refuse to deal with because it's so corrupt. It would be fine if it didn't impact us in Europe, but it does.

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darkwater 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I don't want my apps that have AI implemented to be able to read my messages because Europe mandates feature parity.

The AI provider would still be YOUR choice. You could stick with Apple's if you don't trust the other ones.