Apple has always kept its core technology close to the chest, but this time it's making an exception to get into the Chinese market. Reuters reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter, that Apple has trained a proprietary large language model specifically for the Chinese market, with the training work carried out with support from Alibaba.
Apple's previous approach in China was simple: just borrow ready-made models from local players. Since American models like ChatGPT and Claude are off the table in China anyway, Apple didn't have many options—it just had to use what others had already built. This time it's different. Apple is calling the shots and doing its own training, just with Alibaba stepping in as the venue and sparring partner.
On paper it's Apple's own model, but the actual training process depends on support from Alibaba—there's an inherent tension in that arrangement. For a company that has never given up an inch of ground on tech control, agreeing to let an outside partner get involved in training its own model is, in a sense, an entry fee, as well as a division of labor the two sides negotiated.
If this model successfully lands, Apple would become the first foreign company approved by Beijing to offer its own AI model in China. China has always been strict about reviewing algorithms and models from overseas players, and until now almost no foreign firm has been able to put its own model directly on the table. This concession is a rare case in the Chinese market.
As for the China version of Apple Intelligence that everyday users will actually interact with, it's really a three-way assembly: Apple's own China-specific model as the foundation, Alibaba's Qwen handling language understanding and generation, and Baidu taking over search-related functions. This combination was already registered with China's Cyberspace Administration in mid-July and is expected to roll out in China with a future iOS update. Neither Apple nor Alibaba has responded to the matter so far, and the Cyberspace Administration hasn't offered further explanation beyond completing the registration—the specific launch date is still pending official announcement.
