Two Years Late, Apple Intelligence Finally Gets a Green Light in China
iPhone owners in mainland China have been watching the rest of the world play with Apple Intelligence since 2024. That wait is nearly over. On Saturday, Apple confirmed on its Chinese newsroom that its AI features are coming to China, with testing starting in the developer beta on November 4 and a public launch in December with iOS 27.3.
The holdup has always been regulation. China has strict rules on AI services, so Apple couldn't just switch on what it uses elsewhere. Its answer is a partnership with Alibaba, first confirmed back in February 2025. Alibaba's Qwen model will power parts of the experience, working with Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence to answer questions about photos and documents and to help create content.
The launch list is long. It includes Live Translation, Writing Tools, Clean Up in Photos, Genmoji, natural-language photo search, Memory Movies, email and notification summaries, Smart Reply, call summaries and Type to Siri. English and Simplified Chinese are supported at launch. You'll need an iPhone 16 or newer, an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max, an iPhone Air or an iPhone Duo.
There's one big catch. The rebuilt Siri that Apple showed off at WWDC26, with deeper personal context, awareness of what's on your screen and more ability to take actions, isn't part of this release. Chinese users get the earlier generation of Apple Intelligence plus Qwen. Other Apple devices will follow once approvals come through.
This matters a lot for Apple. China is one of its biggest markets, and local rivals have been shipping AI phones for a while. Being the "phone without AI" there didn't look great.
