Alibaba, headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, announced on Oct 31 that it has partnered with Apple to integrate its Qwen large language model into Apple Intelligence, bringing AI-powered features to iPhone users in China. The features are scheduled to enter testing through the latest iOS developer beta on Nov 4 and launch with the official release of iOS 27.3 in December.

The integration will bring Qwen into Apple's system-level functions, letting users ask Siri questions and access Qwen's knowledge and reasoning capabilities, including asking it to explain documents and photos without opening a separate AI app.

Qwen will also power a new "Compose with Qwen" feature in Apple's built-in writing tools, enabling users to generate text and images. Through the iPhone's Visual Intelligence feature, users can select "Ask Qwen" to identify and understand objects and scenes captured by the camera.

The services will be optional. Users must give consent before sending questions, documents, or images to Qwen. Alibaba said it will not use user requests and generated responses to train its models.

The features will initially be available only on eligible iPhones that support Apple Intelligence in China, subject to conditions involving device purchase location, location settings, and the country or region associated with the user's Apple account.

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said Qwen would be deeply integrated into Apple's ecosystem, offering new intelligent services to users in China.