Apple launched Apple Intelligence features with the iPhone 16 series last year. In the US and (almost) everywhere else in the world, Apple’s iPhone AI features run on a combination of Apple’s own proprietary tech and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In China, however, ChatGPT is banned for users and developers, so Apple needed to find another way to offer Apple Intelligence services in the country. On Thursday, Alibaba announced that it is working with Apple in the country to offer Apple Intelligence on the new iPhones.
“They talked to a number of companies in China. In the end, they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones. We feel extremely honoured to do business with a great company like Apple,” said Alibaba chairman Joseph Tsai.
According to the latest Bloomberg report, Apple is also working with Baidu in China to offer Visual Intelligence features. There is another report from The Information that confirms that Apple is working with Baidu on “an AI-powered search feature that can handle images and text.” The report also claims that Baidu may also power a Chinese version of Siri for Apple in China. Reportedly, Alibaba “will modify and censor content on Apple’s on-device models to meet China law.”
These iPhone AI features will apparently roll out by the middle of the year. As per Bloomberg, Apple will most likely roll out Alibaba and Baidu-powered Apple Intelligence features by May 2025.
However, the announcement still does not clarify which local tech companies in China Apple will work with for AI features. Several reports say Apple has tested models from Tencent, ByteDance, and DeepSeek and might still team up with other companies. Because from what reports suggest, Alibaba will not run the AI models for Apple, it will only work as a layer for China, per local laws, which will be a layer on top of Apple’s own models. “In other words, Apple isn’t working with Alibaba to run its AI models. Alibaba is instead the censorship layer for China, per local laws, on top of Apple’s own models. Baidu is the outside partner to run AI features like Visual Intelligence, playing the OpenAI/Google role,” Mark Gurman, a trusted Apple analyst, wrote in a post on X.
Rolling out the iPhone AI features in China is critical for Apple right now, especially due to its declining sales in the country. In 2024, Apple experienced a 17 per cent drop in annual shipments in China, which marked the largest decline in its shipments since 2016. This downturn allowed Chinese brands like Vivo, Xiaomi and Huawei to surpass Apple in market share in China. Apple lost the top spot for smartphone shipments in China, coming in third in the fourth quarter of 2024 behind Huawei and Xiaomi.
