You're trying to make it sound like a corporation's right to force AI on us is equivalent to an individual's right to speech, which is idiotic in its face. But I'd also point out that speech is regulated in the US, so you're still not making the point you think you're making.
And as far as I'm concerned, as long as Google and Apple have a monopoly on smartphone software, they should be regulated into the ground. Consumers have no alternatives, especially if they have a job.
Code and software are very much forms of speech in a legal sense.
And free speech is regulated in cases of harm, like violent threats or libel. But there's no harm here in any legal sense. People are just unhappy with the product UX -- that there are buttons and areas dedicated to AI features.
Companies should absolutely have the freedom to build the products they want as long as there's no actual harm. If you merely don't like a UX, use a competing product. If you don't like the UX of any product, then tough. Products aren't usually perfectly what you want, and that's OK.
You're completely ignoring the most important point I raised, which is that I can't use a competing product. I can't stop using Microsoft, Google, Meta, or Apple products and still be a part of my industry or US society.
You're not being forced to use the AI features. If you don't want to use them, don't use them. There's zero antitrust or anticompetitive issue here.
Your argument that Google and Apple should be "regulated into the ground" isn't an argument. It's a vengeful emotion or part of a vague ideology or something.
If I want blenders to be sold in bright orange, but the three brands at my local store are all black or silver, I really don't think it's right for the government should pass a law requiring stores to carry blenders in bright orange. But that's what you're asking for, for the government to determine which features software products have.
> You're not being forced to use the AI features. If you don't want to use them, don't use them
You can't turn them off in many products, and Microsoft's and Google's roadmaps both say that they're going to disable turning them off, starting with using existing telemetry for AI training.
> Your argument that Google and Apple should be "regulated into the ground" isn't an argument. It's a vengeful emotion or part of a vague ideology or something.
You're just continuing to ignore that all of this is based on their market dominance. There are literally two options for smartphone operating systems. For something that's vital to modern life, that's unacceptable and gives users no choice.
If a company gets to enjoy a near-monopoly status, it has to be regulated to prevent abuse of its power. There's a huge amount of precedent for this in industries like telecom.
> If I want blenders to be sold in bright orange, but the three brands at my local store are all black or silver, I really don't think it's right for the government should pass a law requiring stores to carry blenders in bright orange
Do you really not see the difference between "color of blender" and "unable to turn off LLMs on a device that didn't have any on it when I bought it"?
> Do you really not see the difference between "color of blender" and "unable to turn off LLMs on a device that didn't have any on it when I bought it"?
Do you really not see that there is no difference?
Either the government starts dictating product design or it doesn't.
I don't want a world where the government decides which features software makers include or turn on or off by default. Whether there are 20 companies competing in a space or mainly 2.
Don't you see where that leads? Suddenly it's dictating encryption and inserting backdoors. Suddenly it starts allowing Truth Social to build new features and removing features on Twitter.
This is a bigger issue than you seem to be acknowledging. The freedom to create the software you want, provided it's not causing actual harm, is as important to preserve as the freedom to write the books or blog posts you want.
If this had something to do with antitrust then the fact that there are only two major phone platforms would be relevant. But the fact that both platforms are implementing LLM features is not anticompetitive. To the contrary, it's competitive even if you personally don't like it. It's literally no different from them both supporting 1,000 other features in common.
And as far as I'm concerned, as long as Google and Apple have a monopoly on smartphone software, they should be regulated into the ground. Consumers have no alternatives, especially if they have a job.