Apple Briefly Posts China Guide for Connecting Siri to Qwen AI

On August 8, Apple published a Chinese-language support guide on its website detailing how Mac users in mainland China could connect their devices to Alibaba's generative AI models, Qwen. The guide explained that eligible Mac users needed macOS 26.6 or later, required signing into a Qwen account, and stated Alibaba would not use submitted materials to train or improve its models.

With this connection, Siri and Writing Tools on Mac would receive more detailed responses, such as photo and document analysis, and text and image generation, respectively. However, no equivalent guide was available for iPhone or iPad users. The guide was removed less than a day later, with Apple's customer service telling Chinese media it had received no notification of a new feature launch.

Tech analysts speculated that the takedown may have been due to pending technical adjustments or regulatory processes, rather than a full reversal of the feature. This brief guide signals Apple's timeline for potentially relaunching the Qwen integration for Mac, although it is unclear when this will happen.