After more than two years of waiting, Apple switches its AI brain to Qwen in China

Apple Intelligence's rollout plan in the Chinese market is set. The model is Alibaba's Qwen; Apple's in-house AI capabilities do not appear in this localized solution.

News announced today: Alibaba Qwen will power Siri, Writing Tools, and Visual Intelligence for Chinese-speaking iPhone users. It will first enter the iOS developer beta on November 4, and in December will be rolled out to a broader audience with iOS 27.3. Alibaba says users' requests and responses will not be used to train its own models.

Apple is more than two years behind the U.S. market. When Apple Intelligence launched in the U.S. in 2024, the China region was consistently absent. The reason is not complicated: generative AI services need to be filed/registered in China, data must be localized, and models must pass review. Apple couldn't handle these on its own and had to find a local partner. After two years of waiting, the answer delivered is Qwen.

Advanced Siri is not among the first batch of features. The so-called Advanced Siri refers to the set of capabilities such as context understanding and cross-app operations. What launches first this time is basic writing assistance, visual recognition, and regular Siri invocation. The AI features users can actually get their hands on are still a watered-down version.

Sahil, the author of the original tweet, noted: This is both a launch and a reminder of how much of AI's rollout progress is determined by regulation; technology itself is not the bottleneck. He asked at the end: Would you replace the AI brain in your phone in order to use AI in your own country?

For Apple, there is no choice. For Chinese users, which is more worthwhile—the usable Qwen version of Siri or the unusable GPT version of Siri—will only be known after the December rollout is complete. The download progress bar in the screenshot is stuck at 14%, still far from complete.