Qwen reaches three Apple Intelligence features
Apple said on 31 October that the first group of Apple Intelligence features is coming to iPhone users in China, and that it has partnered with Alibaba to add support for Qwen in some of them. The release from Apple’s Chinese newsroom names three places Qwen appears: Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, covering text and image understanding. Testing opens on 4 November with the latest iOS developer beta, and the features reach users in China when iOS 27.3 is released in December.
Apple draws a line around what Qwen does. It describes Apple Intelligence as driven by generative models Apple built, and lists the first wave feature by feature: Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime and Phone, Writing Tools, Visual Intelligence, Clean Up in Photos, Genmoji, natural-language search and Memory Movies in Photos, Priority Mail, Mail summaries, Smart Reply, notification summaries, Priority Notifications, Reduce Interruptions, transcript summaries in Notes and for calls, and Type to Siri.
Qwen enters at three points. Siri can reach it when handling certain requests, and users can ask about photos and about documents including PDFs and presentations. A Compose function inside the system-wide Writing Tools has Qwen write original content from scratch. Visual Intelligence uses it for text and image understanding. Access runs through a Qwen account or Sign in with Apple.
What the release leaves out
Apple’s text says nothing about what happens to a request once it leaves the phone. There is no paragraph on retention, on training, or on what Alibaba may keep.
The assurances came from elsewhere. Xinhua reported that Alibaba said user requests and generated responses will not be used to train its models, and that users choose whether to turn the integration on and what to share. Global Times reported that Apple asks for consent before any question, document or image is sent to Qwen. That sentence does not appear in Apple’s Chinese-language release, which addresses access only by saying users sign in with a Qwen account or with Sign in with Apple.
Alibaba chief executive Eddie Wu, quoted by Global Times, said Qwen “will draw on Alibaba’s deep AI capabilities to integrate deeply into the various experiences of Apple’s ecosystem”.
Devices, languages and the gaps
The first features need an iPhone 16 or later, an iPhone Duo, an iPhone 15 Pro, an iPhone 15 Pro Max or an iPhone Air, with Siri and the device language both set to English and Simplified Chinese. Live Translation through AirPods needs AirPods 5, AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation, AirPods Pro 2 or later, or AirPods Max 2, on the latest firmware.
Two things are missing. Support for Apple’s other platforms — Mac and iPad among them — will follow only after the necessary approvals, Apple said. And the update does not include Siri AI or the other next-generation Apple Intelligence features Apple announced at WWDC 2026, so Chinese users get the 2024-generation feature set rather than the rebuilt assistant.
Why a Chinese model at all
Apple Intelligence has been absent from China since launch, held up by rules that require generative AI services to clear a domestic filing. Xinhua reported that China’s cyberspace authority completed filings in July for seven on-device generative AI services for smartphones, Apple Intelligence among them.
Wang Xiaojie, an AI researcher at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told Xinhua this is the first time a leading global consumer hardware maker has used a Chinese large model as the primary system-level AI backbone inside China.
The next dates are fixed: the developer beta on 4 November, then iOS 27.3 in December. What is not fixed is whether Apple adds its own account of the data terms before the public release, or leaves that part of the arrangement described by its partner.
