Apple briefly published a support guide in China explaining how Mac users can connect Alibaba's Qwen AI to Siri and Writing Tools, before pulling it entirely less than a day later.

Reuters first spotted the Chinese-language guide on Apple's support site on August 8, which explained how eligible Mac users in mainland China could connect Qwen, Alibaba's family of generative AI models, to Siri and Writing Tools. According to the document, the extension required macOS 26.6 or later, needed users to sign into their own Qwen account, and specified that Alibaba was barred from using submitted materials to train or improve its models.

Siri would be able to lean on Qwen for more detailed responses to certain requests, including analysis of photos and documents, while Writing Tools could use it to generate text and images. No equivalent guide was published for the iPhone or iPad. The setup closely mirrors Apple's existing ChatGPT extension available elsewhere, which similarly lets Siri hand off complex requests and gives Writing Tools a "Compose" option, all on an opt-in basis.

By August 9, the guide had been removed. Chinese news aggregator ReadHub reported that the guide had disappeared from Apple's site, and TechNode reports that Apple's customer service told Chinese media it had received no notification of a new feature launch. Separately, tech analyst Liu Dingding told the Global Times that the takedown could reflect pending technical adjustments still tied to the regulatory process, rather than a full reversal.