Qwen-powered Apple AI to launch in China in December

Apple will integrate Alibaba Group's Qwen artificial intelligence models into Apple Intelligence in China, bringing the United States technology giant's long-awaited AI services to Chinese iPhone users.

Qwen-powered features will be available for testing from Nov 4 in the latest iOS developer beta and will be rolled out more broadly in December with the release of iOS 27.3, Apple said on Saturday.

The partnership will allow Chinese users to access Qwen through Siri, Apple's writing tools and its visual intelligence feature, enabling text and image understanding, content generation and analysis of documents and photos.

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 PDF files and presentations.

"We are delighted to partner with Apple," Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu said. "Drawing on Alibaba's deep AI capabilities, Qwen will be deeply integrated into experiences across the Apple ecosystem, and together we will bring new intelligent services to Apple users in China."

Apple said users will be asked for permission before a question, document or image is sent to Qwen.

Qwen will also be integrated into Apple's writing tools through a "Compose with Qwen" function that generates original content from a prompt, including text and images.

The integration extends to visual Intelligence, Apple's camera-based AI feature, where users can select "Ask Qwen" to identify or obtain more information about objects and places.

Users can choose whether to enable the Qwen integration and can sign in through Apple or an existing Qwen account. They will remain in control of when Qwen is invoked and what information is shared, according to the companies.

Alibaba said requests and responses generated through the integration will not be used to train its models.

The tie-up marks a significant step in Apple's efforts to bring generative AI services to China, more than two years after Apple Intelligence was first unveiled.

China's cyberspace regulator registered Apple's on-device generative AI service for use on iPhones in July, clearing a major regulatory hurdle. Alibaba said at the time that Qwen would be incorporated into Apple Intelligence across iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS in China.

Apple's initial China rollout will also include real-time translation, photo object removal, notification and email summaries, smart replies, and tools for rewriting, proofreading and summarizing text.

The December update will not include the more advanced Siri AI capabilities or other next-generation Apple Intelligence features unveiled at its Worldwide Developers Conference this year.

The first batch of features 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, according to Apple.