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Hello and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Roger Hearing and on this edition Apple withdraws the highest level of encryption from UK devices after the government demanded access to user data.
Germany's small and medium -sized businesses tell us what they're looking for as the country prepares to go to the polls.
What will AI do to improve voice assistants like Alexa and Siri?
And as Neighbours is cancelled, is the global taste for TV soap operas beginning to die?
But first, one of the biggest issues between governments around the world and big tech is getting access to data.
The authorities say they need to be able, when necessary, to see what criminals or terrorists have been writing and storing on their phones and computers.
Apple, in particular, have been resisting this.
One level of their encryption is end -to -end, which means only the account holder can view items such as photos or documents that they've stored online.
That is called Advanced Data Protection, or ADP.
The UK government's been pushing to see ADP data, which Apple says even it can't access.
Now Apple says it's going to withdraw ADP for all UK devices, an unprecedented step.
Joining me now is our North America technology correspondent, Lily Jamali.
Lily, thanks for being with us.
First of all, what is it that ADP actually does?
Well, it's really good to be with you.
This is a service that is considered the highest level of data security that Apple offers.
It's something that users opt into.
And for those who have it, the account holder alone can see the media that is stored there.
That can be photos.
That can be documents and other types of media.
And as you mentioned, this is done through end -to -end encryption.
It's a service that was offered starting in 2022.
But as you say, it is now going to be going away in the UK.
People who already had it can presumably still use it for a couple more days or weeks.
But if you didn't already opt into it, you can't access it as of today there.
So this is a way of Apple pushing back really against this push from the UK government to try to get access to it.
I know other governments are trying the same thing.
But this is the first time they've actually just removed a service from a country or all the devices in one country, I guess.
Yeah, I mean, it is something of an extreme measure, you know, And it's one that I think is aimed presumably at motivating the UK to back down from what executives there probably think is a very extreme request.
Certainly privacy advocates view it in that way.
This is, you know, Apple has said forthrightly today in a statement that they have never created or built a backdoor or a master key for any of their products and they never will.
and you know there have been other moments in history when they have been asked to do similar things but nothing on the sweeping scale of what has been suggested here and and i think you know when you think of the way that apple has branded itself over the years it's a privacy first company they even
call privacy a fundamental human right on their website this is a really core value for them and they don't want to see anything get in the way of that stay with me lily i'll just bring in the cyber security analyst rachel percival from system force it rachel thanks for being with us as well what do
you make of this i'm quite shocked to be honest um i think it's very disappointing and um i think that the customers have a right to have a say in the matter um i i feel sorry for apple but equally i understand where the government's coming from And whilst I'm all for catching cyber criminals, I don't
think this is the right way to go about it.
Had the government itself got a robust system and that they hadn't suffered data breaches, and if we had the reassurance, then maybe we'd be supportive of it.
I mean, it's a difficult one, as you say, Rachel.
It's a very difficult area for moral reasons, I suppose, you know, the rights of privacy against the rights to obviously protect the public from people, criminals uh and indeed terrorists but one of the arguments at apple was if they gave a back door as you might say into any of this even for a government
in the end that would get into the wrong hands exactly so if the government has access to it then you know state -sponsored nations and you know highly sophisticated and skills adversaries you know the cyber criminals the hackers the black hats are certainly going to have access and um unfortunately
in my professional opinion they far outweigh the you know the bad side as opposed to the good side the government the good citizens I don't feel that we are quite there robustly as a nation I think this can lead us all quite vulnerable and susceptible to more cyber attacks especially on a critical national
infrastructure level so it's very disheartening.
Well that's interesting you say that I suppose what you're saying is that if people don't have this high level of security that Apple has had this adp then that actually means that they they will be more likely to be hacked so in fact it's not going to be good for people in britain with these sort of devices
indeed and you know to use the analogy if if it's your house you know the front door okay you've got the the lock there but this way it's almost just leaving your back door unlocked and it's just a matter of time when the cyber criminals you know all the burglars come and try the handles or the you
know the windows and so on so yeah it's very concerning it's dropping the standard of the security the high standard and as I said I just feel that it's going to lead to a rise in attacks whilst I think the government there will be criminals caught from this so we have to look at the positives as well
you know does that outweigh the the actual you know crime rates fixing the crime rates as such because once they've let them in the you know the uk we the apple that the uk government in which effectively they have done then if the government gets this wrong okay and then we are all susceptible to attacks
because i'm hoping i'm wrong but that's what i predict and then what do we do we've got nowhere to go because that's it our data's been breached and i suppose the point level the point is also that if they allow this to the UK government, they would have to allow it to other governments, some of which might be
rather less... perhaps might be trying to track down dissidents as opposed to anything else.
Indeed, and I think as well it's going to create a snowball effect because now it's Apple, who's going to be next?
It's just going to continue now, I believe.
That'll be very interesting to see.
Rachel, thanks so much for being with us.
Lily, let me come back to you.
I mean, we were talking a lot about Apple, but there are plenty of other companies with similar sort of end -to -end.
There's, of course, WhatsApp, which is part of Meta Facebook, are they going to have to move in a similar direction, do you think?
Yeah, it's been interesting today.
We've put inquiries in with a host of other companies that have similar issues as what Apple has just run into, Meta being one of them because of the encryption offered by way of WhatsApp.
We've also reached out to Google because of their Android encryption.
And it's been very quiet.
Let me say that. I think this is one of those very thorny issues.
And, you know, the contours of this debate that we've been talking about over the last few minutes, very familiar to people like myself who cover tech, people who follow tech closely as observers and readers.
And I think that these companies have to be careful.
They don't want to be offside of a Western democracy like the UK.
But you can tell in the language that Apple has been using today that they really didn't feel that they had much other choice.
And so that is why we're seeing this very aggressive action being taken.
Yeah, it's a really interesting one, isn't it?
Thanks so much for being with us.
Lily, Lily Jamali there, our North America technology correspondent.
That moved by Apple to withdraw this level of security from UK -based devices.
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You're with World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
Now, the Mittelstand is what Germans call their small and medium -sized business sector, the backbone of an economy that for decades has been Europe's largest.
But this key manufacturing hub appears right now to be pondering exactly what the future holds.
Ahead of the federal election in Germany on Sunday, members of the business community have been telling the BBC what they want to see from the next Chancellor.
Many are demanding less bureaucracy, new investment to modernise and cheaper energy costs.
But is any of that possible?
The BBC's Theo Leggett now reports.
Right now we are in the middle of our robotics prototype lab.
So this is a large hallway where all of our robotics prototypes are being fabricated by our teams, which looks a bit messy.
In his robotics lab, surrounded by half -built machines, sections of wiring and pieces of diving gear, I meet with Fabien Benashe.
He's head of Evologics, a family -owned firm that builds underwater robots.
The first thing he shows me looks remarkably like a penguin.
So this is, I would say, an artificial penguin robot.
We call it the Quadroin, Quadroin because it's a robot with four propellers.
It's designed to do climate and environmental research underwater.
Evologics is a classic family -owned Mittelstand firm.
At the moment, business is good and the company is expanding.
But worries about the future are never far away.
So this is kind of high stakes for you and your family.
What are the greatest obstacles you face?
Some of the obstacles that we face is, of course, regulation.
So when it comes to artificial intelligence, when it comes to sensor technologies, when it comes to data handling, there's just lots of different obstacles.
But it's also the plain ways of doing business in Germany and in Europe with employment laws, with being able to hire talent, talent from outside the European Union, for instance.
What do you want to see?
What would a more business -friendly government for you look like?
If you ask me for a personal wish, I would say massive deregulation.
I would like to see for two, three weeks in a row, I would like to have the business news that we see from Argentina and to have them in Germany for a while.
It's about providing great economic conditions, de -regulation, pragmatic decisions on economic policy.
The track record over the last 20 -25 years has been poor.
Fabienne Benache of EvoLogix.
Marie -Thérèse Huskin is Deputy Head of Economics at the BVMW, the trade association that represents the Mittelstand.
Is it fair to say that the Mittelstand is in crisis at the moment?
It definitely is. We look at the numbers we do see that they're not doing well.
We do have rising insolvencies, which we're also seeing, especially amongst smaller companies.
And if this trend continues, what does it mean for Germany?
It's the backbone of the German economy.
We do see that we have a stagnating economy at the moment.
And then what usually happens is if the big ones stumble, like we're seeing, for example, with Volkswagen at the moment, or also BSAF, it sort of trickles down in the supply chain.
So it sort of has a spillover effect.
You've painted a pretty bleak picture of the state of the Mittelstand.
Do you think it can, with the right reforms, become prosperous again?
Because it sounds like a poor outlook for Germany.
If it doesn't, it definitely can get better.
What we're also seeing from surveys is that a lot of SMEs do want to invest, especially if it comes to the energy transition or the digitisation.
But because there is sort of a climate of insecurity at the moment.
Nobody is investing.
So one big demand that we're also having is to actually be able to plan ahead again, because there were a lot of changes, so companies aren't quite sure what's going to happen in the next year or two.
Stability and certainty, less bureaucracy, more investment and cheaper energy.
These are the kind of things Mittelstand firms told us they were looking for.
But meeting those demands looks like a harsh challenge.
Theo Leggett reporting there from Germany.
Well, I'm joined now by Chris Lowe, chief economist at FHN Financial in New York.
Chris, thanks for being with us.
As we heard there, you know, a lot of concerns, I suppose, about the outcome of this election, what it could do for Germany's economy.
But I saw a rather interesting survey suggesting that German shares have actually done rather better than US shares in the last month or so.
And same of European shares, in fact.
They're better than Wall Street.
clearly the doubts that are there aren't enough perhaps to dull the appetites of investors that's right roger i you know from the perspective of the u .s and of course we watch germany very closely it's our fourth largest trading partner after all uh we've seen consumer surveys and investor sentiment
surveys in germany turning positive uh as we get closer to the election, because there is a sense that the CDU, which is the center -right party, is likely to emerge victorious.
Obviously, we won't know till Sunday.
But there is this confidence that they will bring a more business -friendly atmosphere.
And if they do, then investors want to be there they would they would like to be on the ground before it's confirmed so that they can take advantage of any pickup in business activity yeah it is interesting and also briefly of course US stocks actually on that side of the Atlantic not having that greater
time particularly in the last week but overall since the Trump inauguration yeah and here I think it's because we are getting a friendlier business environment.
The Trump team just unveiled their deregulatory plans.
But like everything else they do, it's massive in scope and likely to be extraordinarily disruptive as it's put in place.
And I think that's what's keeping U .S.
shares from rising.
Meanwhile, talking of disruption, Bitcoin, well, let's say cyber crime crime.
And I suppose cryptocurrency often holding that.
Now, we've heard that $1 .5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency Ethereum has been hacked and stolen from the Bybit platform.
I suppose we have to get used to these kind of headlines.
Yeah. But I think, look, this is such an important story because increasingly governments are looking to crypto as an alternative reserve currency.
So it's growing in use in ways that we've got to figure out how to make the whole system more secure.
That is going to be something of a headache, I think, Chris.
Thank you very much for talking to us, Chris Lowe there, Chief Economist at FHN Financial in New York.
Now that many of us are used to having disembodied voice assistants like Siri or Alexa, the race is on to make them more capable, more like, well, an actual assistant.
There are snags, though.
While Siri was supposed to get a major upgrade later this spring, that might be delayed, and Alexa, that other now ubiquitous assistant, has also had an upgrade pushed back.
These two, once standalone innovations, now seen as playing catch -up to AI tools like ChatGPT.
Megan McCarthy -Corino from our US Partners Marketplace looks at how voice assistants fell behind and where they might now be going.
When Apple unveiled Siri at an event back in 2011, the tech seemed revolutionary.
I am a humble personal assistant.
Scott Forstall, Apple's senior VP of iOS software, gave the demo.
Let's say you need to set an alarm clock.
Just ask Siri. Wake me up tomorrow at 6 a .m.
Okay, I set it for 6 a .m.
13 years later, and Sean Salisbury, a software entrepreneur in Oceanside, California, Virginia says that's about all he uses Siri for.
Just simple reminders on my phone, just, you know, remind me to do this or remind me to do that.
Siri has gotten updates over the years.
You can now set two timers at once.
But Salisbury says it still struggles with basic requests.
Like, I'll get an email and I'll tell it like, hey, read me this email, the one that I have open, you know, read me this email.
And it just reads me the last, the titles of the last five emails I've gotten.
Start with your priority mail from Facebook.
Security alert. Log in your Vista.
I don't need to know my Facebook security alert.
Alexa from Amazon, a marketplace underwriter, can also set timers well.
But Grant Barry uses his eight Echo devices to control home electronics, like his lights or alarm system.
I'm able to say what to do exactly using very precise language.
Barry is a professor of language science at Villanova University who also worked on Alexa technology for Amazon.
He says improvements in natural language processing, the way computers understand human language, have helped voice assistants like Alexa become more conversational over time.
But they're still more rigid than modern AI chatbots.
Alexa can tell you jokes, but they're all really bad dad jokes.
Ask her what her favorite color is.
I like ultraviolet.
It glows with everything.
That's her answer every time.
And you know someone hard -coded that in.
Yeah, had to have. Most people don't need stand -up from their voice assistants, but Barry says using more sophisticated AI language models, like those powering ChatGPT, will make it easier to communicate with devices the way we do with people.
It is natural for us to omit information or reference back to things that have been previously stated.
You might ask, hey Siri, who is the president of France?
Emmanuel Macron is the president of the French Republic.
Then just use a pronoun.
How long has he been president?
It started May 14th, 2017.
Okay, how many years is that?
It started May 14th, 2017.
Still needs some work.
ChatGPT tells me it's been seven years and nine months.
OpenAI's chatbot can carry on spoken conversations, as can Google Gemini, but today's top AI systems are typically thought of as typing -based, says Larry Heck, an engineering professor at Georgia Tech who has worked on voice assistants for Microsoft, Google, and Samsung.
I really don't think that we've used voice in the way that many of us have dreamed about.
He wants an AI conversation partner he could ask for help, say brainstorming his trip to Italy.
The AI says, oh, you know, you're interested in staying at a medieval castle in Tuscany.
Oh, you know what, I found a few places.
These are kind of cool.
What do you think about these?
Currently, he says even the most advanced AI systems can only engage in so much back and forth.
They find an answer, or confidently make one up, instead of asking follow -up questions.
That's not great if you want a voice assistant you can trust to make purchases or appointments, potentially at a monthly fee.
Even if voice assistants do improve, users like software entrepreneur Sean Salisbury might not bother.
Right now it's hard for me to think of what I would do because I've been frustrated with it.
Hey Siri, remind me to try you out again once you get updated.
Megan McCartney Carino there.
Now, do you watch a soap?
Now, what I mean is, are you a fan of a long -running TV series that focuses on the everyday lives of a group of people?
Well, of course, I'm sure you recognise not least the theme tune from Neighbours they were out at the beginning.
And Neighbours, for 40 years and had more than 9 ,000 episodes, was the everyday story of suburban Australian folk in Ramsey Street.
And that launched the careers of Kylie Minogue, Guy Pearce and Margot Robbie.
But no more. At the end of this year, the soap opera Neighbours will come to an end.
Again, because it was dropped back in 2022 before being revived by Amazon MGM.
Now, however, the plug has finally been pulled and it reflects a global trend of decline in what was once amongst the most popular and lucrative of TV genres, the soap opera.
The TV critic and broadcaster Scott Bryan told me why he thought Amazon had decided to say goodbye to neighbours.
It was a risk to have a soap on just because elsewhere you tend to have just a limited drama.
a soap is actually quite cheap to produce in a sort of per episode but actually the cost can stack up after a while you have you know a lot of episodes to go and do you have a permanent cast you have a permanent set and crew so I think that the commitment after a while if you're not getting the audiences
sort of coming back each time that could be a major factor in you deciding not to renew so I think it's a bit of a shock just because Amazon really sort of made a big fuss when they took over Neighbours.
There was a big campaign by fans to keep Neighbours.
And then, of course, not that long after they've taken it on, they're now leaving it all together.
So could it be, then, that the audience figures just are not stacking up, that people are simply not watching it?
That could be the case.
I mean, soaps generally, I think, are having a harder time.
Soaps in the UK, for example.
Coronation Street, one of the longest -lasting soaps, have reduced the amount of hours it makes each week.
And even though you are having those appointment -to -view moments, Just this week EastEnders has been celebrating its 40th anniversary.
I think what you have had are fewer people watching the 40th than maybe the one 10 years ago.
I think in the evenings, and it tends to be the case for a lot of countries, I think viewers are now less likely to scroll through the channels to find something to watch.
They're much more likely now to go onto a streaming service or maybe a public service broadcaster's catch -up service or maybe even a void for TV altogether than to sort of watch, get into the habit of soaps.
And I think also what you've been having is fragmenting viewing.
It used to be the case that there was one TV set in the household that everybody watched.
Now a lot of people watch stuff on their phones, on devices, and that means that there aren't that many communal experiences and soaps really have a communal experience.
It's very much like I find a football team, a soccer team.
You're passing it down through for generations.
But now what is happening is that the next generation aren't really watching it in the same way that their older relatives might have been.
And is this true internationally as well?
Because we know there's a big appetite or has been and production in fact in places like Mexico, historically certainly in Australia, but also the US.
I think it really depends on the country.
It really depends on their TV habits.
I think in America, for example, it is definitely the case.
Soaps tend to be viewed on during the day rather than during the evening.
but linear tv viewing has been falling i think it really depends on whether a streaming service has been able to make a strong foothold because i think what that encourages is not only maybe time away from a public service broadcaster which historically have had serial dramas i think it also slowly
but subtly changes the way in which people consume the medium people may be thinking now actually i'll make sort of maybe choices around watching tv from other places maybe watching shows from other times rather than just letting the latest episode of something pop up so i think like the way to get
around this a way for it to improve is to sort of maybe think about how they can work to the audience's favor in some countries what they now do is they box set episodes they release them quite early in the morning um in others they try innovative weeks such as live episodes but also sometimes it's
about sort of maybe doubling down in terms of making your show distinctive and having good storytelling.
Because if the storytelling's good, then I think viewers are much more likely to stick about.
But what about the sensation?
You know, a train crashes into the village or the house or whatever it is, or four of the characters are suddenly murdered by one or the other.
I mean, we've seen a lot of that sort of desperation, certainly in the UK and I think American soap operas.
We have. I mean, I think it tends to be either a twist towards exploring issues in a very heartfelt way, maybe working with charities, all you've had to switch towards sensationalism to try to drive up ratings and there's no sort of correct model i think they're all sort of experimenting and that's
sort of the way that they'll be doing it i think it's um really sort of interesting in regards to sort of what's happening with neighbors because neighbors is a show which is from australia very popular in the uk but it's been essentially banked by an american streamer so i think it highlights the complicated
way that tv's been consumed because there are fans of neighbors all around the world.
There are fans of neighbours in Australia too.
But it has been always a very sort of British, a very specific country that has been essentially propping up this soap from the other side of the world.
So I think, you know, for the second time, sadly, I mean, the viewers aren't, you know, are going to be saying goodbye to Ramsey Street.
I guess the question is whether it will come back again.
Scott Bryan. Well, I'm sure it'll be available on various streams pretty much forever.
But we won't. We're off.
That's it from World Business Report.
Bye bye.
