Apple Intelligence's launch in mainland China has entered its final stage. According to Bloomberg, Apple plans to officially roll out Apple Intelligence this December (12) via the iOS 27.3 system update. The initial launch includes the AI features released in the US two years ago, covering iPhone, iPad and Mac, and does not include the all-new Siri AI assistant released this year. Previously, the service completed generative AI service filing with the cyberspace authorities on July 8 and obtained launch approval on September 29.
Baidu: partner for search and Siri-related features
According to Bloomberg, as Apple pushes to bring its AI capabilities to the Chinese market, it has partnered with Baidu on search and Siri-related features. This matches information disclosed by domestic media in July this year: Apple will embed Baidu's software services in the Siri voice assistant and Visual Intelligence features.
An earlier traceable clue comes from the code level. A teardown of the iOS 27 Beta 2 firmware by third-party developers revealed a new module in the system named "Baidu Visual Search," pointing to the integration of visual search capabilities. The appearance of this module aligns with Baidu's long-standing accumulation of capabilities in the visual search field.
Alibaba: AI model capabilities integrated
Previously, according to domestic media reports, Alibaba would be integrated as an AI capability into Apple Intelligence, providing Chinese users of iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS with intelligent experiences such as text and image understanding and content generation. The approval obtained on September 29 covers both Apple Intelligence and Alibaba's AI models, including Tongyi Wanxiang and Qwen.
Apple Intelligence is Apple's system-level personal intelligence framework, composed of an on-device 3 billion parameter model and a high-performance cloud model, supporting text proofreading, image generation, search, and cross-app operations. At WWDC 2026, Apple announced that Siri would receive major improvements and be renamed "Siri AI", adding capabilities such as conversational depth, system-level integration, on-screen content reading, and app interaction. What launched in China is precisely the base feature set of this upgraded version.
The features Apple is launching in China are the relatively basic feature set released two years ago. At present, domestic vendors such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo already widely offer AI service features in the domestic market, and Apple's actual market performance remains to be seen. Informed sources also noted that Apple management is not optimistic about the new Siri AI launching in China anytime soon. The situation in the EU market is similar—Siri AI has yet to launch in Europe either, with approval timing undetermined.
This article was provided by Baidu and reposted by QbitAI with authorization; the views belong to the original author.