Apple cannot launch its artificial intelligence functions in China without the help of a local partner, as required by law. This is why the American manufacturer has tested several possibilities. Last December, the approach with Baidu reportedly failed due to technical and confidentiality issues.
Alibaba partners with Apple Intelligence in China
The Chinese giant's large language model responded to queries that were off the mark, according to the website The Information. And then Baidu wanted to harvest as much data from iPhone users as possible to improve its model; China or not, Apple's privacy policy limits the exploitation of its customers' personal data.
Apple then reportedly approached Tencent and ByteDance (TikTok's parent company), and even showed interest in DeepSeek. But in the end, the Alibaba solution was chosen. The e-commerce giant is said to have won the day thanks to the quality of the data collected from its many customers, a database that can be used to train Apple's AI models and provide more personalized responses.
Also according to The Information, the two partners have submitted Apple Intelligence's features to the authorities in the hope of receiving the green light. Which means they could be offered in a future update to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Support for simplified Chinese in April (for Apple Intelligence users outside of China) will be a first step.
Apple absolutely must accelerate on the AI front to get back in the race in China, where iPhone sales are declining in favor of local manufacturers who are much quicker to multiply these functions.
As for Europe, it will be served in April with the final version of iOS 18.4, which will also add support for French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The first beta of this update, planned for the next few days (hours?) should allow European developers to discover all these new features.
Update 02/13 — While Apple has not confirmed anything, Alibaba hastened to announce that the American manufacturer had indeed chosen its AI for Apple Intelligence functions in China. The group's chairman, Joe Tsai, unveiled the news during the World Government Summit in Dubai.
Source: The Information
0 Comments