Alibaba’s Qwen AI to be integrated into Apple Intelligence in major partnership

The Qwen-powered feature will be available for testing in the latest iOS developer beta starting Nov. 4 and roll out to Chinese users with the official iOS 27.3 release in December, according to Alibaba.

The partnership brings Qwen's AI capabilities to multiple use cases within Apple's operating system. Through Siri, Writing Tools, and Visual Intelligence, Chinese users will be able to tap Qwen's capabilities for text and image understanding and content generation.

Notably, users can choose whether to enable the Qwen integration and what information to share. Alibaba said it will not use user requests or generated responses for model training.

The feature will be available on iOS to users who purchase an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone in China, or whose device location and Apple Account country or region are both set to China..

Apple Intelligence is the AI system Apple first unveiled at its Worldwide Developers Conference in 2024. In a key regulatory move, China's cyberspace authority completed the filing of seven on-device generative AI services for smartphones in July, including Apple Intelligence.

Earlier, it was reported that Apple had unveiled its first touchscreen MacBook Pro, with preorders open and sales set to begin on November 6.