Apple will finally bring its artificial intelligence system to iPhone users in mainland China, powered by models from Alibaba, in a partnership that ends one of the longest waits in the company’s recent history.
Alibaba announced on Saturday that its Qwen large language model will be integrated into Apple Intelligence for users in China. Testing begins with the latest iOS developer beta on 4 November, with a public launch alongside iOS 27.3 in December.
The deal puts Qwen inside Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence. For some requests, Siri will be able to call on Qwen’s broader knowledge to answer directly. Users will also be able to ask questions about selected photos and documents, including PDFs and presentations, and a “Compose with Qwen” feature in Writing Tools will generate original text and images from a prompt. Visual Intelligence, Apple’s camera-based feature, will include an “Ask Qwen” option to identify objects and places in front of the user.
The integration is opt-in. Users can sign in with either Sign in with Apple or an existing Qwen account, and Apple says it will ask for permission before any question, document or image is sent to Qwen. Alibaba says user requests and generated responses will not be used to train its models.
The first wave of features for China will also include real-time translation, photo object removal, notification and email summaries, smart replies, and tools for rewriting, proofreading and summarising text. It will be available on supported iPhones, including the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 16 and later models, iPhone Air and iPhone Duo, with device and Siri languages set to English or Simplified Chinese.
There is a notable omission. The December update will not include the more advanced Siri AI capabilities or other next-generation Apple Intelligence features unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this year. Apple has said support for other platforms will follow after the necessary approvals are obtained.
The partnership matters because China has been the conspicuous gap in Apple’s AI rollout. Apple Intelligence was first unveiled in 2024, but bringing it to the world’s largest smartphone market required a local partner and regulatory clearance. China’s cyberspace regulator registered Apple’s on-device generative AI service in July, and earlier this month the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved Alibaba’s AI models for integration into several Apple handsets, including the new iPhone Duo.
For Alibaba, the deal puts Qwen at the heart of the iPhone experience for hundreds of millions of users in China. For Apple, it removes a competitive disadvantage against domestic rivals whose phones have offered on-device AI for years. Whether Chinese users embrace an AI assistant that routes some requests to a domestic model, under rules that keep the feature opt-in, will be the real test when iOS 27.3 arrives in December.
Sources: People’s Daily, “Alibaba, Apple partner to bring Qwen to Apple Intelligence for users in China” (31 October 2026), https://peoplesdaily.pdnews.cn/business/er/30053462528 ; MCI Group, “Qwen-powered Apple AI to Launch in China in December” (31 October 2026), https://mcigroup.my/mci-business/qwen-powered-apple-ai-to-launch-in-china-in-december/
