By Paul Derrington, Jr.
CEO | Chief Engineer | Research Engineer | Editor, D-CSIL
3 min read
Key Takeaways
Apple said on October 31 that the first Apple Intelligence features are coming to iPhones in mainland China, with testing in the iOS developer beta from November 4 and a public release with iOS 27.3 in December. Apple says it has partnered with Alibaba so users in China can use Alibaba's Qwen in Siri, Writing Tools, and Visual Intelligence.
How Apple Intelligence reached China
Apple Intelligence launched in the US with iOS 18.1 in 2024. Outside China, Siri can pass certain requests to OpenAI's ChatGPT. The Apple Post reports that regulatory requirements kept the platform unavailable in mainland China after its 2024 introduction.
China's cyberspace regulator said on July 15, 2026 that Apple's on-device generative AI service had been registered for use on iPhones, Reuters reported. Alibaba confirmed its Apple partnership in February 2025, according to The Apple Post. What Apple announced on October 31 is the schedule: testing in the next iOS developer beta from November 4, and the public release with iOS 27.3 in December.
Inside China: Qwen in Siri, Writing Tools, and Visual Intelligence
According to Apple, users in China can use Qwen in Siri, Writing Tools, and Visual Intelligence. Siri can pass certain requests to Qwen and draw on its broader knowledge, users can ask questions about photos and documents — including PDFs and presentations — and a Compose option in Writing Tools lets Qwen write original content from scratch anywhere in the system.
The integration is opt-in, Alibaba said in its statement, as reported by China Daily and Global Times. Users sign in with a Qwen account or with Sign in with Apple, and Alibaba says it will not use user requests or generated responses to train its models. Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said: “We are delighted to partner with Apple. 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,” according to China Daily.
The rest of the first wave is the original Apple Intelligence feature set: Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime, and Phone (including in person through recent AirPods), Clean Up in Photos, Genmoji, natural-language photo search, Priority Mail and mail summaries, notification summaries, and Type to Siri.
What the first release does not include
Apple says this update does not include Siri AI or the other next-generation Apple Intelligence features announced at WWDC 2026. The first features are for supported iPhones, and Apple says support for other platforms will follow after the necessary approvals are obtained.
According to Apple, the features run on iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 16 models and later, iPhone Air, and iPhone Duo, with the device and Siri set to English or Simplified Chinese. Global Times reports that the Qwen integration will initially be available to users in China who bought an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone, or whose device region and Apple Account country are both set to China.