Apple Intelligence, Alibaba AI ‘Q1’ installed in China

Alibaba "Trial version available for testing from the 4th... Officially available next month"

(Shanghai = Yonhap News) Correspondent Cha Byeong-seop = Apple has decided to integrate Chinese company Alibaba's AI model Q One (Chen One) into its artificial intelligence (AI) system 'Apple Intelligence' in China.

According to Alibaba's social media on the 1st (local time), Alibaba announced that it had agreed to cooperate with Apple the previous day and that "Q1 will be integrated into Apple intelligence."

Related features can be tested in the latest developer beta version (trial version) of iOS, Apple's operating system (OS), starting from the 4th of this month, and will be provided to Chinese users when iOS 27.3 is officially announced next month.

Alibaba explained that Chinese users can use functions such as text and image understanding and content creation by directly calling Q.1 while using functions such as Apple's voice assistant 'Siri', writing tools, and visual intelligence.

It went on to say that users can choose whether or not to use the Q1 integration feature, and that neither users' questions nor generated answers will be used to train Alibaba's AI model.

This feature is available to users who purchased an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone in China or whose device location and country on their Apple account are both set to China.

Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming said, "I am very happy. Q1 will be deeply integrated into various experiences in the Apple ecosystem. Together with Apple, we will provide a completely new AI service to Chinese Apple users."

Wang Xiaojie, a professor at Beijing University of Technology, said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency that this is the first time that a world-class consumer hardware manufacturer uses a Chinese large-scale language model as the main AI base in the system in the Chinese market, and viewed it as an important step forward in the commercial use of Chinese large-scale models.

China is Apple's core market, but Apple Intelligence features have not been available so far. However, in July of this year, the China Internet Information Administration (CAC) included Apple Intelligence in the list of newly approved business operators and allowed its launch in China.