As reported earlier today, Apple has officially partnered with Alibaba to enable Apple Intelligence for iPhone users in China. The country has strict regulatory requirements on artificial intelligence, which has led Apple to partner with Chinese companies for AI processing. Now a new report from Bloomberg details how Apple Intelligence will work in China.
Apple Intelligence in China
In China, local legislation requires data to be processed on Chinese servers instead of being sent to third-party servers in other countries.
Prior to today’s confirmation, there were rumors about Apple negotiating with Alibaba and Baidu to power Apple Intelligence features in China. According to Mark Gurman, Apple has teamed up with both companies, which will help Apple enable different parts of Apple Intelligence for Chinese users.
The partnership with Alibaba aims to create an on-device system that will analyze and modify Apple’s AI models for iOS and macOS. This system will filter and censor the AI output to ensure that it complies with the Chinese government’s requirements. Sources say that the Chinese government will be able to request changes to AI models through Alibaba when it needs to change the information delivered to users.
Apple devices will be able to detect when they’re running an outdated AI model and will automatically disable Apple Intelligence until new models are downloaded. This process will happen automatically in the background without users noticing.
Baidu, on the other hand, will power features such as Visual Intelligence – which currently relies on Google and OpenAI. Presumably it will also replace the ChatGPT integration in Siri.
Some more complex Apple Intelligence requests are processed online in what Apple calls a Private Cloud Compute. In China, Apple may process these requests on servers operated by state affiliate GCBD, the company that already operates iCloud for Chinese users.
Apple has already confirmed that it will expand Apple Intelligence support to more languages for the first time with iOS 18.4. Among the new languages supported will be Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Even so, the report says that Apple may wait until May to enable Apple Intelligence for users in China.
It’s worth noting that this censorship system will only apply to devices sold in China. iPhones, iPads, and Macs from other countries won’t use the local AI system, even when brought into China.
The first beta of iOS 18.4 is expected to be released to developers next week.
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