Alibaba's Qwen and Apple Intelligence team up

Alibaba Group, the Chinese tech conglomerate, has announced a collaboration with Apple Inc. to integrate Alibaba's Qwen AI model into Apple's upcoming iOS 27.3. The partnership was announced on Saturday, with the Qwen-powered feature set to undergo testing in the latest iOS developer beta starting November 4. This marks a significant step for domestic large models in the Chinese market, as it marks the first time a leading global consumer hardware manufacturer has utilized a Chinese AI model as the primary system-level AI backbone, according to an AI expert from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

Chinese users will have the option to leverage Qwen's capabilities for text and image understanding, content generation, and other use cases within Apple's operating system through Siri, Writing Tools, and Visual Intelligence. Users will be able to choose whether to enable the Qwen integration and what information to share, with Alibaba assuring that user requests and generated responses will not be used for model training.

The feature will be made available on iOS devices purchased in China or whose device location and Apple Account country/region are both set to China.

Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group, stated that Qwen, powered by Alibaba's AI expertise, will integrate into Apple's ecosystem and collaborate with the company to deliver new AI-powered service experiences to Chinese users. The partnership brings Alibaba's AI capabilities to multiple use cases within Apple's operating system, showcasing the potential for cross-border collaboration in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence.