Apple AI finally lands on China's iPhone: After more than two years of waiting, Siri gets Alibaba's Qwen

Beating AI News Flash, in the early hours of November 4, Apple pushed out the iOS 27.3 developer beta, and China-market iPhones can finally use Apple Intelligence. The first batch opens up features including Photo Clean Up, AI Writing, Live Translation, Notification Summaries, and Genmoji.

Apple Intelligence landed overseas back in 2024, and Chinese users waited more than two years for the beta.

China-market Apple Intelligence is integrated with Alibaba's Qwen, but basic features such as Photo Clean Up and Notification Summaries are still handled by Apple's in-house models. For complex questions, Siri can call on Qwen to answer. Users can also hand photos, PDFs, and PPTs to Qwen for image recognition and document analysis. The writing tools can directly have Qwen write articles and copy, and even generate images.

Qwen requires users to actively opt in, and Apple will seek consent each time before sending a question, photo, or document to it. Alibaba said it will not use this content for model training.

However, what's open this time is still early-stage Apple Intelligence features. The next-generation Siri that Apple showcased at WWDC 2026, which can understand screen content and perform actions across apps, has not yet been opened to the China market.

The first batch supports the iPhone 15 Pro series, iPhone 16 and later models, as well as iPhone Air and iPhone Duo. Device and Siri language need to be set to Simplified Chinese or English. Apple plans to launch the official version in December, while iPad and Mac still await approval.