With the recent DeepSeek hype, it looked almost natural that Apple could choose this LLM to power its Apple Intelligence platform in China. However, iPhone AI will be handled by a well-known Apple partner, Alibaba.
Since Apple is required to work with a local Chinese company to develop AI models for its iPhone models sold in China, the company was in talks with several firms to decide which one would be responsible for the Apple Intelligence features. According to The Information, Cupertino aimed at Baidu, but as the company didn’t meet its standards, it started looking for other possibilities in the past months.
Apple assessed models developed by Alibaba, Bytedance, and Tencent, and it seems the company chose Alibaba to handle iPhone AI in China.
That said, it’s unclear when Apple Intelligence could be released in China. So far, Apple is expected to add support for other languages in April, including Portuguese, Italian, German, Korean, Vietnamese, and Chinese.
Still, adapting Apple Intelligence to Alibaba’s models might take longer. It’s also possible that Apple partners with them or other Chinese companies to offer their LLMs alongside its iPhone AI, as Apple has done with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, starting with iOS 18.2.
Apple Intelligence was first released in the US in December with iOS 18.1. While the Apple platform no longer requires users to be in the US, instead only using Siri in American English, it’s nowhere near what other players can achieve.
Even though Apple Intelligence works with ChatGPT, the results and possibilities are far behind what OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google, and many others are offering right now.
We expect Apple to start testing iOS 18.4 at any moment. While this software update was teased to bring on-screen awareness for Siri, Apple might delay this feature for iOS 19 or later, as the most expressive changes might come in 2026.
