Apple has reportedly partnered with Alibaba to add artificial intelligence features to Chinese iPhones, following the success of Alibaba’s Qwen AI model.
While Apple has been rolling out its AI suite Apple Intelligence, these features are unavailable to users in China due to the country’s laws requiring government approval of AI models before release.
“Apple Intelligence unlocks exciting new capabilities that make your iPhone, iPad, and Mac even more helpful and useful, from Writing Tools to help refine your writing, to summarised notifications that surface what’s most important, to the ability to search for almost anything in your photos and videos by simply describing it,” said Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi after the suite’s initial launch in October.
Australian users have had access to Apple Intelligence since December, with the feature expected to release worldwide over 2025.
Apple Intelligence includes ChatGPT integration, but OpenAI’s models have also not been approved by Chinese regulators.
Alibaba and Apple have submitted their jointly-developed Apple Intelligence features to Chinese authorities for approval, according to The Information.
Alibaba released its Qwen 2.5-Max model in January, which the company says outperforms ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Meta’s Llama. Qwen is open-source, and includes text generation, translation, and image generation.
Apple reportedly previously chose Baidu as an Apple Intelligence developer, but exited the partnership when Baidu’s progress lagged.
The company also held talks with Tencent and ByteDance in December to negotiate adding their AI models to Chinese iPhones.
Apple’s share price (NASDAQ: AAPL) closed at US$232.62, up from its previous close at $227.65. Its market capitalisation is $3.49 trillion.
