Apple says the first of its Apple Intelligence features, the AI tools built into the iPhone's everyday apps, are coming to iPhones in mainland China, where they do not work today. App developers can try the features from Nov. 4 in an early version of iOS, and they reach Chinese users when iOS 27.3 comes out in December. Apple says support on its other devices will come once the necessary approvals are granted.
The first set includes Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime and phone calls, which also works for face-to-face talk through supported AirPods; Writing Tools, which rewrite, proofread and summarize text; Visual Intelligence, which tells people about things they point the camera at; Clean Up, which removes distracting objects from photos; and Genmoji, which makes a new emoji from a typed description. It also brings summaries of emails, notifications, and written transcripts of recorded calls and Notes audio, priority emails at the top of the inbox, and typing to Siri. Apple says these features run on AI models it built itself.
Apple has also teamed up with Alibaba to add Alibaba's Qwen AI to some features in China. Siri can turn to Qwen for some requests, and people can ask Qwen about photos and about documents such as PDFs and slide decks. Qwen also works inside Visual Intelligence, and Writing Tools can have it write original text from scratch. People sign in with a Qwen account or with Sign in with Apple. Outside mainland China, Apple Intelligence can hand some requests to OpenAI's ChatGPT, an option Apple offers only where ChatGPT's app and service are available.
The launch leaves out Siri AI, the new AI version of Siri that Apple offers as a test version in some languages and countries with iOS 27, and the other newer features Apple announced at its WWDC 2026 developer conference. The features need an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone Air, iPhone Duo or an iPhone 16 or later, with Siri and the phone's language set to English or Simplified Chinese.
Apple's support page says that once Apple Intelligence is available in mainland China, supported devices people already own can turn on a core set of the features, but newer features will wait while Apple works through regulatory requirements. According to a news report, Apple Intelligence was approved in China in July. Apple has not said the terms of its deal with Alibaba, whether using Qwen will cost anything, or when Siri AI and the features for its other devices will arrive.