Alibaba partners with Apple to integrate Qwen AI model into Apple Intelligence for Chinese market

By Saadet Gokce

ISTANBUL (AA) - Chinese tech company Alibaba Group has partnered with Apple to integrate its Qwen AI model into Apple Intelligence for the Chinese market, state-run Xinhua news agency reported Saturday.

The feature will be available for testing in the latest iOS developer beta starting Nov. 4 and will launch with the official iOS 27.3 release in December, Alibaba said.

Qwen’s AI capabilities will be integrated into several Apple features, including Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence.

Users can choose whether to enable the integration and what information to share. Alibaba said user requests and generated responses would not be used to train its AI models.

The feature will be available on compatible iPhones whose device location and Apple Account region are both set to China.

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said the partnership would bring new AI-powered services to Chinese users.

Wang Xiaojie, an AI expert at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said this marked the first time a major global consumer hardware maker had adopted a Chinese large language model as its primary system-level AI backbone in the Chinese market.

Saadet Gökce