Apple Intelligence to Arrive in China With iOS 27.3 Update
Apple has announced that part of its AI feature set will reach the Chinese market with iOS 27.3. A beta is planned for November 4, with the full release in December.
Apple, the maker of the iPhone, has announced that it will bring its Apple Intelligence suite of artificial intelligence features to China as part of the iOS 27.3 software update. The company said so on its Chinese newsroom website, according to The Verge, which cited MacRumors. The features had not previously been available in the Chinese market.
An iOS 27.3 beta, which will give users first access to the new tools, is scheduled for November 4. The full iOS 27.3 release is due in December.
Which features are included
The launch does not include the new AI-powered version of Siri, Apple's voice assistant. Instead, Apple is rolling out several earlier Apple Intelligence features: notification summaries, real-time translation, rewriting and proofreading tools, visual intelligence, and the ability to remove objects from photos.
Apple also says it worked with Chinese technology company Alibaba to add support for its Qwen chatbot in some experiences. The Verge notes this appears similar to iOS's integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT, which launched in 2024.
Earlier steps
Apple Intelligence was approved in China in July, a sign that the launch of the AI tools was approaching. Reuters reported in August that Apple had trained its own large language model (LLM), an AI system that processes and generates text, specifically for the Chinese market.
