Alibaba's Qwen joins Apple Intelligence in China

Apple and Alibaba said on October 31, 2026 that Alibaba's Qwen will be integrated into Apple Intelligence in mainland China, putting a Chinese large language model inside Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence after more than two years of regulatory delay.

Qwen is added to selected Apple Intelligence experiences rather than replacing Apple's own models, which Apple said power the system. Siri can hand selected requests to Qwen for broader knowledge and questions about photos, PDFs and presentations. Writing Tools gains a "Compose with Qwen" option that generates text and images from a prompt, and Visual Intelligence adds "Ask Qwen" to identify objects and places.

Alibaba said it will not use user requests or generated responses to train its models. The integration is opt-in: users sign in with a Qwen account or Sign in with Apple, and Apple asks permission before a question, document or image is sent to Qwen.

"We are delighted to partner with Apple," Alibaba Group chief executive Eddie Wu said in a statement. "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." Apple announced the launch on its Chinese newsroom website.

Testing begins November 4 in the latest iOS developer beta, and the features reach Chinese users with the public iOS 27.3 release in December, according to Apple. The first wave covers iPhone only; iPad, Mac and other platforms follow after Apple wins further approvals, with no date given.

Apple lists the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16 and later, iPhone Air and iPhone Duo, with the device and Siri languages set to English or Simplified Chinese. The South China Morning Post, which Alibaba owns, put the first wave at around 18 features.

Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence at its 2024 developer conference and shipped it in the United States that year, but China requires generative AI deployed there to clear a security review. Regulators filed Apple's on-device AI among seven smartphone services in July 2026, and Alibaba said then that Qwen would reach iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS.

The arrangement echoes Apple's partner deal with OpenAI's ChatGPT, which reached iPhones in December 2024 outside China, according to The Verge. Bloomberg reported on October 14 that Apple planned the December launch without Siri AI.

For video creators shooting on iPhones in mainland China, the first wave is narrow. Clean Up in Photos and Visual Intelligence could shorten the gap between a rough capture and a usable still, and Ask Qwen could identify objects or locations while scouting. Nothing in Apple's release changes how video is edited or generated, and the features reach only owners of the listed newer handsets.

Apple Intelligence's China preview begins November 4; the public iOS 27.3 release is due in December.