To celebrate his new book 75 Brexit Benefits, Gully Foyle shares a bonus “76th benefit”: UK consumers gain quicker access to cutting-edge tech like Apple’s real-time translation, while EU laws such as the Digital Markets Act delay or block these advances.
To celebrate the publication of my new book, “75 Brexit Benefits: Tangible Benefits From The UK Having Left The EU”, I thought that I would give a bonus 76th benefit for the Briefings for Britain readers. As I am sure you can imagine, I have collated hundreds of tangible benefits over the past few years – and yet more were annoyingly popping up while I was trying to finish writing the book! So here’s another one that missed the text deadline.
Apples and Oranges
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a contentious piece of EU legislation, that places limitations and requirements onto providers of digital services of EU consumers. All of these are of course well intentioned, but the impact of the legislation on digital services providers are quite literally preventing modern technology and services being provided to EU consumers.
On 24th September Apple put out a Press Statement for the attention of their customers in the EU, to explain to them directly what it is about the Digital Markets Act which prevents some features being available to them, and which of their upcoming services and features are going to be affected. They make it crystal clear that, in most cases it is the need to make their products available to consumers who do not use Apple hardware that causes the issue.
One of the most hotly anticipated features impacted by this limitation, is the Live Translation service – which allows users of Apple AirPods to take advantage of AI to translate speech in other languages in almost real-time, relaying what is said in the user’s chosen language instead. This is quite literally science fiction coming to life, with Apple inventing a less creepy version of the Babel Fish from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There are few places in the world where real-time speech translation would be more useful on a day to day basis, than in the EU Parliament itself – the EU was the world’s largest employer of linguists in 2018, having over 5,000 permanent staff working solely on the effort of translation and interpretation. But no, the EU cannot make use of this technology, as its own laws stifle the advancement.
But it isn’t just the latest technology that poor legislation stifles – the Digital Markets Act has also caused Apple to open up their mobile devices to applications from outlets other than their App Store, which has resulted in applications for pornography and gambling now being allowed when they have previously been prohibited.
Now I am not a user of Apple products, outside of where I am forced to for work (yes I’m looking at you former employer who made me use a MacBook), but the benefit to UK consumers here is as clear as day – the latest technology is available to the UK almost immediately, being one of the first places in the world that new features are released. The EU will have to wait longer for some features, and some it will never be able to have – and that is the fault of poor legislation that the UK is thankfully now free from.
This problem is not exclusive to Apple, nor to the rollout of new features on mobile devices. Every major AI provider has had to limit or delay availability of their services and product offerings within the EU in the last few years – something I have covered in some detail within the book. When you have the former Lib Dem leader and devout EU cheerleader himself, Nick Clegg, putting out statements regarding how damaging the EUs legislation on AI is – well I’m preaching to the converted here but suffice to say that if even Nick Clegg can see the benefits, then maybe we are better off out after all.
Gully Foyle is an outspoken online researcher, commentator and now published author, whose first book “75 Brexit Benefits: Tangible Benefits from The UK Having Left The European Union” is on sale now at Amazon and all good bookstores.
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