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
South China Morning Post reports that the announcement of Qwen3 paves the way for launch.
Alibaba Group Holding has released its updated Qwen3 family of artificial intelligence (AI) models that could signal the potential roll-out in China of machine-learning technology on a range of Apple devices, including iPhones, iPads and MacBooks.
In a Monday post on social media platform X, the Qwen team of Alibaba’s cloud computing unit said it launched open-source Qwen3 models optimised for Apple’s MLX framework for machine learning.
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.
Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, called the deal “extremely disturbing”. He warns that Apple could be enabling a company closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party’s, much like the fears over TikTok that got it banned-but-not-quite in the U.S.
“The United States is in an AI race with China, and we just don’t want American companies helping Chinese companies run faster,” added Greg Allen, the director of the Wadhwani A.I. Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Apple will also likely take PR flak on the human rights front given that Qwen3 censors its output in line with Chinese government directives.
The partnership with Alibaba aims to create an on-device system that will analyze and modify Apple’s AI models for iOS and macOS. This system will filter and censor the AI output to ensure that it complies with the Chinese government’s requirements. Sources say that the Chinese government will be able to request changes to AI models through Alibaba when it needs to change the information delivered to users.
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