Apple says Mac users in China can connect to Alibaba’s Qwen AI service

Beijing, Aug 8 - Apple has unveiled a guide detailing how eligible Mac users in mainland China can link Alibaba’s Qwen artificial-intelligence service to the company’s Siri digital assistant and Writing Tools feature. This move may assist Apple in gaining a foothold in China’s rapidly growing AI PC market, where it has recently experienced a decline in market share to domestic competitors like Lenovo and Huawei.

Qwen is Alibaba’s suite of generative-AI models, capable of generating text, images, and analyzing documents, photos, and other inputs based on user prompts. Apple’s updated guide in Chinese specifies that users who opt in can utilize Qwen through Siri for more nuanced responses to certain requests, including image and document analysis. Writing Tools can also leverage Qwen to generate text or images from user descriptions.

The extension is available for Macs operating on macOS 26.6 or later, contingent on specific China-related conditions. Users must activate the extension and sign up for a Qwen account. Alibaba explicitly states that users' data will not be used to train or improve its models, as per the guide.

According to Omdia, Mac shipments in mainland China declined by 9% year-on-year in the first quarter, with Apple holding a 9% market share, compared to Lenovo’s 31% and Huawei’s 16%. Lenovo has positioned its Tianxi personal AI agent as a cornerstone of its AI-PC strategy, while Huawei is integrating AI capabilities throughout its HarmonyOS ecosystem.

By connecting Qwen to Siri and Writing Tools, Apple offers a locally compliant solution to provide Mac users with enhanced document, image, and content-creation capabilities while maintaining control over the Mac interface. For Alibaba, integration with Apple’s native software could potentially expand Qwen’s reach beyond its existing applications and cloud services.

While Alibaba has announced plans to incorporate Qwen into Apple Intelligence across its iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro software in China, Apple’s latest guide exclusively covers Macs. The guide does not specify which particular version of Qwen will be powering the Mac extension.