Apple partners with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba for Apple Intelligence
Apple and the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba will together bring the first batch of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone owners in the 1.4 billion people country.
Reuters reports that Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai confirmed his company has partnered with Apple. The partnership will leverage Alibaba’s AI to deliver Apple Intelligence to Chinese customers. Local regulations require foreign companies like Apple to partner with a local company to deliver AI features.
Apple Intelligence will speak Chinese and other non-English languages via a software update (likely iOS 18.4) coming in April. iPhone sales in China, Apple’s second-biggest market by revenue, have fallen, and bringing Apple Intelligence to iPhone owners in China could reverse the trend.
Apple partners with Alibaba for Apple Intelligence in China
“They talked to a number of companies in China,” Tsai said speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Thursday. “In the end they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones. We feel extremely honored to do business with a great company like Apple.”
He said the partnership will help Apple localize Apple Intelligence for the Chinese market and navigate the regulatory environment. Alibaba’s latest Qwen 2.5 model apparently surpasses DeepSeek-V3, which caused a stir by developing AI models at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI and other Western rivals.
Apple Intelligence uses on-device and server-side processing. It uses OpenAI’s technology for generative AI, integrating ChatGP capabilities into Siri and Writing Tools in all countries where Apple Intelligence is currently available.
Apple “passed over” DeepSeek
The Information recently reported that the Cupertino firm has “passed over” the Chinese AI company DeepSeek in recent months due to the US government banning the DeepSeek chatbot on government devices over privacy concerns. The publication also said that Apple and Alibaba recently submitted a set of Apple Intelligence features to China’s cyberspace regulator for approval.
It added that the iPhone maker had discussed partnering with other Chinese internet companies on Apple Intelligence, including ByteDance and Tencent. The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple also considered a partnership with Baidu. The company ultimately ended up partnering with Alibaba because AI models created by Alibaba’s domestic rivals didn’t meet Apple’s requirements.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/02/13/apple-intelligence-china-alibaba-partnership-confirmed/
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