Apple Intelligence is coming to China in December, with Alibaba’s Qwen model powering some features

Timeline and first features

In an announcement dated Oct. 31 on its mainland China newsroom, titled “Apple 智能即将登陆中国” (“Apple Intelligence is coming to China”), Apple said the first Apple Intelligence features will reach iPhone users in China. The release went live on the evening of Oct. 30, U.S. time; the same text does not appear on Apple’s English-language newsroom. The features open for testing in the latest iOS developer beta starting Nov. 4 and will reach users with the official release of iOS 27.3 in December. Apple said support for other platforms will follow “after the necessary approvals are obtained,” without giving a date.

The first wave includes Live Translation built into Messages, FaceTime and Phone; Writing Tools for rewriting, proofreading and summarizing text; Visual Intelligence, which uses the iPhone camera to give information about nearby objects and places; Clean Up in Photos; and Genmoji, which creates emoji from a text description. Also included are natural-language search and memory movies in Photos, priority messages, email summaries and Smart Reply in Mail, notification summaries on the Lock Screen, priority notifications, the Reduce Interruptions Focus, summaries of audio recordings in Notes and of call transcripts, and Type to Siri. Live Translation for in-person conversations works with AirPods 5, AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation, AirPods Pro 2 and later, and AirPods Max 2.

Supported phones are the iPhone 16 and later, iPhone Duo, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone Air. Siri and the device language must be set to English or Simplified Chinese. According to Apple’s text, the update does not include Siri AI or the other next-generation Apple Intelligence features announced at WWDC 2026. MacRumors notes that Image Playground is also missing from the list.

Apple’s models and Qwen’s role

Apple says Apple Intelligence runs on generative models it built itself. The company has also partnered with Alibaba to add support for Alibaba’s Qwen (千问) model to some experiences: inside Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, including text and image understanding. According to Apple, Siri can draw on Qwen’s broad knowledge for certain requests, and users can ask questions about photos as well as PDFs and presentation documents. A Compose (创作) feature in Writing Tools lets Qwen create original content from scratch. Qwen is accessed with a Qwen account or with Sign in with Apple. According to Global Times, Visual Intelligence also gets a separate “Ask Qwen” option for identifying what is in front of the camera.

According to a statement Alibaba posted on WeChat, as reported by Global Times, the Qwen integration is opt-in. Apple asks for consent before any question, document or image is sent to Qwen, and Alibaba says it will not use user requests or generated replies to train its models. The opt-in was announced for the Qwen integration; Apple’s text does not describe such a choice for the rest of Apple Intelligence. At first, the Qwen integration will be available only on iOS, on Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones bought in China or on devices whose region and Apple account country are both set to China.

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said, in Global Times’ English rendering, that “Qwen will draw on Alibaba’s deep AI capabilities to integrate deeply into the various experiences of Apple’s ecosystem, and together bring brand-new intelligent services to Apple users in China.”

Regulatory path

According to Global Times, Apple Intelligence was among seven on-device generative AI services that completed China’s regulatory filing process in July 2026. The paper also reported that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved, in October, the integration of Alibaba’s AI models into several Apple handsets, including the new iPhone Duo. The Verge noted that Reuters reported in August that Apple was training its own large language model for the Chinese market.