Apple finally lets its AI into China, with Alibaba's Qwen riding along

Apple has officially announced that Apple Intelligence is coming to China. The features land first in the iOS 27.3 beta starting November 4, with the full release for everyone in December. For two years Chinese iPhone owners watched AI features roll out everywhere except at home.

It's not the full package. The new Siri AI isn't coming to China. What does arrive are the earlier features: notification summaries, real-time translation, rewriting and proofreading tools, visual intelligence through the camera, and removing objects from photos.

The interesting part is the partner. Apple has wired Alibaba's Qwen chatbot into some experiences, much like ChatGPT is built into iOS outside China. Foreign AI can't launch in China without a local partner and government sign-off, which is why Apple only got approval for Apple Intelligence in July. Over the summer it was also reported that Apple trained a separate language model specifically for the Chinese market.

For Apple this is about staying alive in a crucial market: Huawei and other local brands have sold AI phones for ages while the iPhone went without. Verdict: late and trimmed down, but Qwen now lives inside the iPhone.