Reuters reports that Apple has trained its own language model for the Chinese market, rather than relying on a third-party model to power its Apple Intelligence features in the country.
The LLM was developed with the help of Alibaba, according to the report’s sources. The development marks a departure from Apple’s previous strategy of relying on domestic models to bring generative AI to its devices sold in China.
The deployment of its AI features in China is expected in the coming months. The rollout is described by the report as a “dual-track strategy” for AI deployment in China, allowing Apple to overcome regulatory hurdles that other US technology companies have limited access to.
The move makes Apple the first foreign company approved by the Chinese government to offer a proprietary AI model in the country.
Apple previously agreed with Chinese regulators to incorporate Alibaba’s Qwen model into Apple Intelligence features, similar to Apple’s existing ChatGPT extension available elsewhere. Apple briefly released a support guide in China explaining how Mac users can connect Alibaba’s Qwen AI to Siri and writing tools, before removing it entirely less than a day later.
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