Key Takeaways
- Apple Intelligence is coming to mainland China powered by Alibaba’s Qwen model, two years after it launched in the United States.
- Developer beta testing starts November 4, with the public rollout planned for December with iOS 27.3.
- Users can choose whether to enable Qwen, and Alibaba says requests and responses will not be used for model training.
Apple Intelligence is finally coming to iPhones in mainland China, and the engine behind it will be Alibaba’s Qwen rather than ChatGPT. Alibaba announced the partnership on Saturday, October 31, confirming that its Qwen model will power Apple Intelligence for Chinese users, with testing in the latest iOS developer beta from November 4 and the official rollout in iOS 27.3 in December.
The announcement ends a long wait for Chinese iPhone owners. Apple Intelligence first launched in the United States two years ago, but it had never officially reached mainland China, where foreign AI models face strict regulatory requirements and Apple needed a local partner to operate.
What Chinese iPhone users will get
Through Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, Chinese users will be able to tap Qwen’s capabilities for text and image understanding and content generation. For certain requests, Siri will call on Qwen and its broad knowledge, and users will also be able to ask Qwen about photos and documents, including PDFs and presentations.
A Compose option in Writing Tools will let the model write original content from scratch anywhere in the system, while Visual Intelligence will bring features such as object removal in photos and real-time translation. Genmoji, Type to Siri and Priority Messages in Mail are also part of the package arriving in China.
Apple Intelligence is finally coming to iPhones in mainland China, and the engine behind it will be Alibaba’s Qwen rather than ChatGPT.
The catch: no next-generation Siri AI yet
There is one notable limitation. The rebuilt Siri AI assistant that arrived with iOS 27 elsewhere, which carries a waitlist of its own, is not part of the China package. Apple has said plainly that this update does not include Siri AI or the other next-generation Apple Intelligence features announced at WWDC 2026.
That means Chinese users will get the current generation of Apple Intelligence features first, with the newer assistant apparently following at a later, unannounced date.
Who can use it — and the privacy promise
Eligibility covers users who bought an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone in China, or whose device location and Apple Account country or region are both set to China. Supported devices include iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, the iPhone 16 series and later models, as well as iPhone Air and iPhone Duo, provided the regional requirements are met.
The integration is opt-in: users choose whether to enable it and what information to share. Alibaba has confirmed that user requests sent to Qwen through Apple Intelligence, and the answers it gives, will not be used to train its models. Apple and Alibaba have also built in controls that let users decide whether to enable or disable the feature and manage the flow of shared data.
- Developer beta testing starts November 4 in the latest iOS developer beta.
- Public rollout planned for December with iOS 27.3.
- Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence all connect to Qwen.
- The next-generation Siri AI is not included in this update.
- Qwen is opt-in, and Alibaba says requests will not be used for training.
Why Alibaba, and why now
Alibaba chief executive Eddie Wu said in a statement that the company was delighted to partner with Apple, adding that drawing on Alibaba’s deep AI capabilities, Qwen will be deeply integrated into experiences across the Apple ecosystem and work with Apple to deliver new AI-powered service experiences to Chinese users.
The deal is also a major win for Alibaba’s AI ambitions. Qwen has grown into one of China’s most prominent model families, and powering Apple Intelligence on hundreds of millions of iPhones in its home market puts it at the centre of everyday AI use. The partnership is specifically meant for China — neither company has announced plans to bring the Qwen integration to other markets, where Apple Intelligence continues to route some requests to ChatGPT.
The timing also fits a wider week of AI announcements, as governments and companies race to shape how AI reaches ordinary users. The Quad group of countries pledged more than $85 million for trusted AI across the Indo-Pacific, while Microsoft planned a $25 billion bond sale to fund its AI spending and Google unveiled its Gemini 4 Carbon cybersecurity AI model.
What to Watch Next
The November 4 developer beta will be the first real-world test of how Qwen performs inside Apple’s software, from Writing Tools in Simplified Chinese to Visual Intelligence on everyday photos. The December rollout with iOS 27.3 will then bring the features to a much wider audience in China, and attention will turn to whether — and when — the next-generation Siri AI follows. For now, the partnership gives Chinese iPhone users the Apple Intelligence features the rest of the world has had for two years, built on a homegrown model instead of a foreign one.