Tim Cook says China has approved Apple Intelligence

Apple chief executive Tim Cook said Apple Intelligence has been approved for use in China and that a test version is due later in October, according to an interview with China’s state-backed outlet The Paper, conducted in Shanghai and carried by Reuters. It was Apple’s own first public confirmation of a story Reuters had reported from unnamed sources in August: that Apple had built a model for the China market with help from Alibaba.

The test release, according to the reporting, will be limited to live translation, writing tools and photo cleanup; the new Siri AI assistant is not included. Secondary accounts gave varying detail on the Alibaba side of the arrangement — China Daily reported that Apple’s own model and Alibaba’s Qwen were both newly registered with Chinese authorities, while BigGo Finance reported that Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen and Tongyi Wanxiang models power cloud-based features and that Baidu handles Siri localisation and visual intelligence in China. None of these secondary claims about the division of labour between Apple’s own model and its partners’ has been confirmed by Apple itself, and should be read with that caveat.

Cook also met China’s commerce minister, Wang Wentao, in Shanghai the same day, Reuters reported, to discuss AI development and Apple’s business in the country. Regulatory filings surfaced earlier in October had already registered Apple’s system separately from Alibaba’s models with China’s technology regulator, but without a public launch date. Cook’s statement supplies what that reporting lacked: a company-level confirmation and an approximate date for China’s first public access to any Apple Intelligence feature, more than a year after Apple launched the feature set elsewhere.