There are strong indications that Apple Intelligence could be about to launch in China, following its deal with Alibaba to use its Qwen models.A local report says that Alibaba has updated its ChatGPT competitor Qwen3, which has been optimized for the AI framework used on Apple devices … Apple can’t use ChatGPT in China Apple partnered with OpenAI for the launch of Apple Intelligence, with fallback to ChatGPT for anything Apple’s own AI systems can’t handle.However, ChatGPT is banned in China, and the Chinese government effectively forced Apple to partner with a Chinese AI company instead.
Apple was known to have been in discussions with a number of Chinese AI companies before Alibaba announced in February that it had won the contract.May now be about to launch reports that the announcement of Qwen3 paves the way for launch.There had been fears the tariff war might delay the launch, but this now appears to have been resolved.
US government concerns The launch appears to be proceeding despite US government concerns about Apple’s deal with Alibaba.Lawmakers last month raised national security concerns that the partnership could assist China in developing its AI capabilities using personal data from US citizens.Apple will also likely take PR flak on the human rights front given that Qwen3 censors its output in line with Chinese government directives.
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