IT Home, October 15: Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman posted on X today (October 15) that Apple plans to launch Apple Intelligence in mainland China for the first time through the iOS 17.3 update in December. This will mark the first deployment of the AI platform in the Chinese market.
The initial features include Genmoji custom emojis, notification summaries, writing tools, and the Clean Up feature in the Photos app, which allows users to remove specific objects from photos.
The report states that the new Siri AI assistant, the Graphy generation tool, and the newer version of Genmoji are not included in the initial launch.
The China-specific version will integrate Alibaba's AI models, including Qwen and Tongyi Wanxiang. Reports state that Apple received regulatory approval from Chinese authorities on September 29, permitting recent iPhone models to support Apple Intelligence and the aforementioned models.
Related reading: "Filing Numbers for Mainland China Versions of Apple iPhone 15 Pro and Subsequent Models: Apple Intelligence, Tongyi Wanxiang, Tongyi Qianwen"