Apple will bring its 2024 Apple Intelligence features to China as soon as December if a new rumor is correct. The features are expected to arrive as part of the iOS 27.3 release.
Apple has been working to get Apple Intelligence ready for the Chinese market since it first announced the features in 2024. The rollout was held back by strict regulatory requirements, including a mandate to use a backend provided by a local company.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Apple has finally cleared all of the regulatory concerns as recently as July. The launch is said to be set for December with iOS 27.3, according to people familiar with the matter. The backend and models will allegedly be provided by Alibaba AI, using the Tongyi Wanxiang and Qwen models.
The China version will be far more limited than the one that disappointed customers in 2024. Apple is not bringing an equivalent to its new Apple Foundation Models built with Gemini Frontier Models to China. Instead, the region will only get the original features, which were weak at debut and will seem archaic today. Regulations also won't allow Image Playground, and text generation will be blocked in some apps. Because iPhone, iPad, and Mac run third-party models well, Apple may not need much of its own AI technology to satisfy demand in the region. Apple's China performance has held strong without a first-party AI offering, so the rollout will likely have little effect on sales either way.
Source: AppleInsider · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing