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Siri remembers, not in Europe

Siri remembers, not in Europe

Siri AI and conversation memory: what iOS 27.2 brings

On October 26 Apple shipped iOS 27.2, and with it Siri AI learned to remember. The assistant can now pick up past conversations: if last week it suggested three restaurants, today it can resume that thread without anyone having to explain everything again. It also draws on new sources, such as photos received in Messages, people invited to Calendar events, voicemails, Safari history and the Reading List.

The same release adds five languages (French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish), while traditional Chinese, Norwegian, Turkish and Vietnamese are expected by the end of the year. Italian appears on neither list. A new screen called Excluded Apps lets people decide, in one go, which apps Siri, Search and suggestions are allowed to consult. The feature is still in beta and requires at least an iPhone 15 Pro.

Why Siri AI is not coming to Europe: Apple versus the DMA

For anyone living in the European Union, though, the list of novelties stays on paper. Siri AI is blocked on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch across all twenty-seven member states, Italy included, and Apple said so in writing on the very page announcing the new languages. According to Macitynet, switching the phone’s language is not enough to get around the restriction.

The decision dates back to June, when Apple unveiled Siri AI at WWDC and, on the same day, announced that Europe would have to wait. The reason given is the Digital Markets Act, the EU regulation that requires so-called gatekeepers to open their platforms to competitors. Under the regulators’ reading, which Apple calls “extreme,” the company would have to grant any virtual assistant direct access to users’ private data and the ability to act autonomously on the device, without the safeguards that come with Siri today. Cupertino also points to research showing that an AI system can be hijacked to steal personal information. Craig Federighi, head of software engineering, said he was “deeply disappointed” not to offer the feature to European users.

Mac and Vision Pro owners still get Siri AI with macOS 27 and visionOS 27. On iPhone and iPad, however, there is no app for revisiting conversations, no expanded Visual Intelligence, no built-in writing tools and no Siri mode in the camera. For now, there is no date.

The rejected proposal and the 2024 precedent

Apple says it looked for a compromise. It proposed an intermediary called the Trusted System Agent, through which assistants made by other companies could use the same features as Siri AI, and as a fallback a European launch paired with a gradual rollout of that system over eighteen months. The Commission’s answer, as Apple tells it, was a flat no. Brussels has made no public statement on the matter, so for now only one side of the story is known.

The script is a familiar one. In October 2024 Apple Intelligence launched in the United States while European iPhones were left out, again because of regulatory uncertainty tied to the DMA. It reached the EU with iOS 18.4 in April 2025, after months of negotiation. The difference is that back then there was a deadline; this time Apple offers none.

Gemini already remembers, in Europe too

The detail that complicates the narrative comes from Mountain View. Google switched on Gemini’s memory in Europe in April 2026: the assistant learns name, job, interests and places from earlier chats, reuses them when relevant, and the option is on by default but can be turned off in settings. In September, Gemini then fully replaced Google Assistant on Android phones, Europe included.

European rules, then, already allow an assistant with a memory: the clash is about how far Apple must open the iPhone to rivals, and on what terms.

My nameless assistant

I don’t use Siri. For years I have relied on Google’s assistant, which for a long time had no real name, and I think that was a mistake. Alexa and Siri became almost members of the household, while “OK Google” remained a command, a phrase to recite like the combination of a padlock. The fact that it is now called Gemini looks to me like a late correction rather than a breakthrough.

Its performance, meanwhile, has been uneven. Some days it gets things right away, other days it trips over basic requests, and that failure to grasp the obvious annoys me more than any declared technical limit. I can accept an assistant that doesn’t know everything; I find it harder to accept one that doesn’t understand what I just asked.

Repeating yourself is tiring: memory as a UX choice

That is exactly why a Siri able to remember interests me, even though I wouldn’t use it. I hate repeating myself, so much that it made it into the rules I follow when writing for this blog: no word used twice, no idea restated. An assistant that starts from scratch every time forces me to do precisely what I avoid on the page, which is explaining context, preferences and details all over again.

From a user experience standpoint, memory is the step that turns a command interface into a real conversation. It raises serious questions about what gets stored, for how long and with which controls, which is why Google lets people switch it off, while Apple hands the choice of accessible apps to Excluded Apps. Elsewhere I have described how cautious I am about handing my passwords to an AI agent; with conversation memory, on the other hand, the convenience seems worth the trade-off, as long as the button to turn it off is easy to find.

Rules chasing innovation

A Europe chasing innovation with restrictive regulations looks to me more like a bureaucratic failure than a form of protection. The DMA was born with good intentions, namely stopping a handful of giants from locking down their ecosystems, but the concrete outcome for someone with an iPhone in Milan is a phone that gets features a year late, or never. It is hard to call it protection when the only noticeable effect is falling behind. I touched on this when writing about Bern stepping away from Microsoft: on digital choices, Europe tends to regulate a lot and build little.

Smart speakers are striking back precisely thanks to AI, and the game is being played right now. Apple says it is working “constructively” with Brussels to find a way forward. We’ll see.

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Chiara Bonifazi