In the Old Continent, a battle is unfolding between the old way of doing TV and the new one (whose players are all non-EU). A battle that has pushed broadcasters present in the 27 member countries to take pen and paper, calling for the help of policymakers against smart TVs and digital assistants to level once again a situation that, according to them, disadvantages them.
DO DIGITAL ASSISTANTS AND SMART TV HAVE THE REMOTE CONTROL IN HAND?
According to Reuters, the appeal was sent to the Executive Vice President of the Commission, Teresa Ribera, to obtain the formal designation of foreign Big Tech as “gatekeepers” under the infamous (for non-EU entities that invariably get caught in its nets) Digital Markets Act.
In fact, the European players – gathered under the banners of the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe, the European Broadcasting Union, and the Association of European Radios – argue that smart TVs and digital assistants suggest to users what to watch on television, favoring certain content (those streaming) and disadvantaging those broadcast in the old way of doing television.
IS THE VOGHERA HOUSEWIFE 2.0 PERSUADED BY ALEXA?
A silent persuasion aimed at privileging their own services, keeping users within their ecosystem, and making it more difficult to switch from one app to another, both technically and contractually.
In the crosshairs of European broadcasters are therefore not only smart TVs that with their operating systems and menus would guide choices, but also virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri. It is also noted that OpenAI entered the sector last year with a beta feature called Tasks for its AI-based algorithm ChatGPT.
In short, to revive the image used by Alberto Arbasino of the proverbial “housewife of Voghera” once dazed by quizzes and soap operas, today the average user would be at the mercy of operating system algorithms and Artificial Intelligences.
SOME FIGURES ON THE EVOLUTION OF EUROPEAN TV
The old European TV broadcasters, knowing that the EU DMA operates only when the concentration of a service is high — 45 million monthly active users and 75 billion euros in capitalization — support their complaint with these numbers: Android TV would have increased its share from 16% to 23% between 2019 and 2024, Fire OS from 5% to 12%, while Samsung’s Tizen OS would have reached 24%.
For broadcasters in the Old Continent, the absence of a gatekeeper designation, besides causing a regulatory void, would fuel the risk that, in the growing Artificial Intelligence market, AI assistants usually of non-EU origin (internal competitors are completely absent) end up assuming a dominant role remaining unchecked, that is, without being subject to the obligations of the DMA.
