On a Saturday from Hangzhou, Alibaba and Apple joined in a quiet but consequential arrangement: Alibaba's Qwen model will become the thinking beneath Apple Intelligence for people in China. It is a moment where a global device maker looks inward to a domestic intelligence, and where the question of who shapes the assistant in your pocket begins to take a new national form. Users will be invited rather than compelled, choosing both whether to join and what to share, with the reassurance that their words will not be used to teach the model. The change arrives in stages, first to testers in Novem
Alibaba's Qwen to Power Apple Intelligence for Chinese iPhone Users, Starting With iOS 27.3
On a Saturday from Hangzhou, Alibaba and Apple joined in a quiet but consequential arrangement: Alibaba's Qwen model will become the thinking beneath Apple Intelligence for people in China. It is a moment where a global device maker looks inward to a domestic intelligence, and where the question of who shapes the assistant in your pocket begins to take a new national form. Users will be invited rather than compelled, choosing both whether to join and what to share, with the reassurance that their words will not be used to teach the model. The change arrives in stages, first to testers in November and then to the wider public in December.
On Saturday, Alibaba Group announced from Hangzhou that its Qwen AI model will be built into Apple Intelligence for iPhone users in China. The change will arrive in two steps, first for testers and then for everyone.
Starting November 4, Qwen-powered features will appear in the latest iOS developer beta. In December, with the release of iOS 27.3, they will reach ordinary Chinese users. The model will work across Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, helping people understand text and images and generate content.
The arrangement puts control in users' hands. They can choose whether to enable Qwen and decide what information to share. Alibaba has said it will not use requests or the responses they receive to train its models. Access is tied to purchasing an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone in China, or to having both device location and Apple Account country set to China.
Eddie Wu, Alibaba's chief executive, said the partnership would bring the company's AI expertise into Apple's ecosystem. Wang Xiaojie, an AI expert at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, called it a first: a top global hardware maker using a Chinese large model as its main system-level AI in the Chinese market, a meaningful step for domestic models.
The deal follows Apple's unveiling of Apple Intelligence in 2024 and China's July filing of seven on-device generative AI services for smartphones, Apple's among them. The next milestone is November 4, when developers begin testing.
On Saturday, from Hangzhou, Alibaba Group announced a partnership with Apple to build its Qwen AI model into Apple Intelligence. The target is iPhone users in China, who will see the change first in testing and then in a full release.
The schedule, as Alibaba laid it out, has two steps. Starting Nov 4, the Qwen-powered feature will be available for testing in the latest iOS developer beta. It will then reach Chinese users with the official release of iOS 27.3 in December.
Qwen will work across three parts of Apple's operating system: Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence. Through them, users in China will be able to draw on the model for understanding text and images and for generating content.
The announcement stresses user control. People can choose whether to turn the Qwen integration on, and they can decide what information to share. Alibaba also said it will not use user requests or the responses generated for them to train its models.
Eligibility is defined by purchase and by settings. The feature will be available on iOS to people who buy an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone in China. It will also be available to those whose device location and Apple Account country or region are both set to China.
Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group, said Qwen will bring Alibaba's AI expertise into Apple's ecosystem and that the company will work with Apple to deliver new AI-powered service experiences to Chinese users.
Wang Xiaojie, an AI expert at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, called the deal a first. In his description, a top global consumer hardware maker is using a Chinese large model as the primary system-level AI backbone in the Chinese market. He described this as a significant step in the commercial application of domestic large models.
The regulatory background matters here. Apple first unveiled Apple Intelligence at its Worldwide Developers Conference in 2024. In July, China's cyberspace authority completed the filing of seven on-device generative AI services for smartphones, and Apple Intelligence was among them.
The next marker is Nov 4, when the developer beta opens the Qwen feature to testing, ahead of the December iOS 27.3 release.
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