IT Home On October 15, it is expected that Apple’s Apple Intelligence will enter the final stage of launch in Mainland China.
According to Bloomberg News today, Apple plans to officially launch the Apple Intelligence in December this year through the iOS 27.3 system update. The first version of the AI features, which were released in the US two years ago, will be available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices, but it does not include the new Siri AI assistant released this year.
Previously, this service was registered as a generative AI service by the network information department on July 8, and obtained online permission on September 29.
Baidu: Partner for search and Siri-related features
According to Bloomberg, during Apple's efforts to implement AI capabilities in the Chinese market, it collaborated with Baidu on search and Siri-related features.
This statement is consistent with the information disclosed by domestic media in July this year: Apple will integrate Baidu’s software services into the Siri voice assistant and Visual Intelligence feature.
An earlier traceable clue comes from the code level. The breakdown of the iOS 27 Beta 2 firmware by third-party developers shows that a new module named “Baidu Visual Search” was added to the system, indicating access to visual search capabilities. The emergence of this module is consistent with Baidu’s long-term accumulation of capabilities in the field of visual search.
Ali: AI model capability integration
Previously, according to domestic media reports, Alibaba will integrate AI capabilities into Apple’s smart devices, providing intelligent experiences such as text and image understanding, and content generation for Chinese users of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS.
The permissions obtained on September 29 cover both Apple Intelligence and Alibaba AI models, Including Tongyi Wanxiang and Qwen.
Apple Intelligence is Apple’s system-level personal intelligence platform, consisting of a 3 billion parameter model on the device side and high-performance models in the cloud. It supports text proofreading, image generation, search, and cross-app operations. WWDC 2026 saw Apple announce significant improvements to Siri and its rebranding as “Siri AI”. It now has enhanced dialogue depth, system-level integration, screen content reading, and application interaction capabilities. What was launched on the app is precisely this upgraded version of the basic features.
IT Home notes that the features that Apple launched in China this time are a relatively basic set of functions that were released two years ago. People familiar with the matter also mentioned that Apple’s management is not optimistic about the recent launch of the new version of Siri AI in China. The situation in the EU market is similar; Siri AI has not been launched in Europe yet, and the approval timeline is unknown.