Apple Intelligence is launching in China before the EU
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| One big hurdle for Apple's AI is gone. Credit: Apple |
When Apple announced major changes to its Apple Intelligence set of features in June, it came with a big caveat: Almost none of the features were available in the European Union and China.
This has now changed – at least in China.
According to Reuters, Apple Intelligence has been registered with China's cyberspace regulator. The new features are coming in iOS 27 and other new Apple platforms which are currently in beta; this development paves the way for them to launch in September, when iOS 27 is scheduled to launch proper. However, Reuters says that the regulator's statement did not give a precise launch date for the AI features in China.
Additionally, Alibaba said its Qwen AI model will be integrated into Apple Intelligence in iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Vision Pro devices in China. Furthermore, Baidu said it's working with Apple to develop Apple Intelligence features for Chinese iPhone users.
SEE ALSO:iPhone 18 news, leaks, and rumors: Release date, iPhone 18 Pro details, more
The report doesn't mention the European Union, where new Apple Intelligence features are mostly unavailable. In June, Apple said that the features were delay in the EU for iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 due to Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA). At the time, the company said it does "not currently have a timeline for Siri AI’s availability on iOS and iPadOS in the EU.”
Topics Apple Artificial Intelligence
Chinese customers can now hear I can’t look that up for you right now in their native language
ReplyDeleteAnd I still can’t launch it in my iPhone to do anything meaningful.
ReplyDeleteTry the 27 beta
DeleteI never use beta. I don't want to put my data on risk. I can wait two months no worries. I am using available AI apps for my needs.
DeleteSo you’re complaining that time doesn’t move fast enough for September to arrive?
DeleteI’m saying I’m good I can wait.
Delete"And I still can’t launch it in my iPhone to do anything meaningful."
DeleteDoesn't sound like you were 12 hours ago.
Does this include Siri ai?
ReplyDeleteif you read the summary, apple intelligence is based off chinese models, not gemini like the international versions
Deletetim cook is really our generation’s best diplomat
ReplyDeleteWhat‘s diplomatic here? They just follow Chinese regulations and implement it using Chinese providers.
DeleteDiplomacy for Apple’s interests, not yours
DeleteThey are a corporation not a government
DeleteThat’s really simplistic. Apple really has a mind-boggling amount of experience dealing with China, and it’s not nearly as simple as you make it sound. Check out the book Apple in China by Patrick McGee if you want to know more.
DeleteOne of the VPs listed in Apple’s leadership page is the person who just handles Apple’s operations in China. No other geographic market has that distinction.
DeleteProduct of too much internet consumption. They need a hero or villain in every story.
DeleteComment deleted by user
ReplyDeleteDid you even read the description?
Deletestill nothing for EU
ReplyDeleteThey should interfere in the market less Iunno
DeleteChina literally asked them to remake their entire AI based on Chinese LLMs. The EU asked them to open the service to competition. Yet only one of them is market interference?
DeleteApple Intelligence is available in the EU.
Deleteoh sorry, actually I meant to say about new Siri
DeleteThe deal worked with China because they have their own major LLMs that they can plug into Apple Intelligence.
Deleteletimcook
DeleteOnly the new Siri AI isn’t launching in the EU yet.
DeleteWhich is... a bummer
Delete„Only“
Deleteyeah, which is pretty much everything about iOS27... i have an US Apple id so i'm not affected but it sucks big time...
DeleteYou just need any non-EU/China Apple ID.
DeleteIs it? So many little refinements.
DeleteAnd Siri AI will come eventually. They’ll work it out.
Eventually but it could take years. Apple will back off when they will start to lose market share. But this will take time. First, AI has to start to be an integral feature of a phone and Apple users have to learn what they are missing out of. This is the worst case scenario but yeah it could take years.
DeleteAs an EU citizen, I’m not too bothered. By the time we get it it’ll be more fleshed out.
DeleteAnd we know we’re not getting it, so we can all decide if we wanna keep buying apple products or not.
Which is like... the most anticipated thing? That Apple has promised for a year or two now?
DeleteThey didn’t promise it to the EU, they just promised to have it.
DeleteGo anywhere else that doesn’t fine and sue Apple over frivolous things. It’s obvious they don’t want to deal with your greedy politicians who use bad interpretations of the law as a profit center.
You need to read more nuanced news
DeleteMaybe Apple does since they’re the ones not releasing it due to overly strict EU compliance laws.
DeleteGo ahead and call up the $3 trillion company. Explain to them the tens of millions of dollars that went into the launch decision was tainted by a bad news article.
Apple wants to earn as much money as possible. And when it comes to it, they will never do what’s best for people unless they can earn money from it.
DeleteThey have a strict privacy policy yes, but that’s because they believe that’s the best way to earn more money, and perhaps with a little touch of wanting to do some good from perhaps Steve Jobs and others when they started out.
EU compliance laws are created by politicians that EU citizens voted for. They represent what people here on average want, and there’s a process of how they are created that is meant to be for the good of the people, in multiple countries; Not a single company. Is it perfect? No. But it is democracy vs oligarchy, and probably the best solution we have at the moment.
It’s ok to criticise how the EU regulations work, and they are not always perfectly thought through. But first, understand what you are talking about. How should they change, and what’s not working as best for the people?
Exactly, if it were worth the money they’d release it by now. They haven’t because Europeans aren’t the consumers they used to be and in the coming years it will get progressively worse.
DeleteApple sees no point in spending millions on valuable company resources for this when there are hundreds of better things to work on than expediting the creation of a worse version of an existing feature just to appease a bunch of politicians who are still confused about how air conditioners work.
They said this in 2025:
This week, Apple told European users that it knows their iPhone experience is sub-par and that they should blame the Digital Markets Act (DMA). In a news release, Apple acknowledged that it has had to hold back and delay features in Europe due to the regulations in the DMA, and says that it’s only going to get worse unless the law is rolled back.
The company argues the law is slowing down innovation, weakening privacy, and making users’ iPhones less safe.
“We want our users in Europe to enjoy the same innovations at the same time as everyone else, and we’re fighting to make that possible — even when the DMA slows us down,” Apple said in a statement. “But the DMA means the list of delayed features in the EU will probably get longer. And our EU users’ experience on Apple products will fall further behind.”
“Despite our concerns with the DMA, teams across Apple are spending thousands of hours to bring new features to the European Union while meeting the law’s requirements,” Apple says. That’s time that those engineers aren’t spending building new features for everyone.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s simply efficiency. The rest of the world shouldn’t have to stay behind because some European country elected an old hag who just upgraded to Windows XP
Btw the European Union is in it for the money too, especially apples money via fines. They retroactively sued Apple for billions when they had committed no crime. The EU sued Ireland so they could retroactively an invalidate an Irish law Apple had been following so they could then sue Apple for breaking the law.
That’s a shadier tactic than I’ve ever seen Apple employ.
triggered?
DeleteNot really, the EU economies are collapsing because overregulation has been preventing forward momentum in innovation for decades. Even the industry giant VW announced yesterday they’re cutting 50k European jobs.
DeleteStop trying to drag US companies down with you.
Stop spreading false information. The economics of EU is not collapsing, and if were it would be because too much trust in the ally with the US, which clearly aren’t working well with a fascist leading the country.
Deletegood news for the in-China-sold iPhone users.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it will change anything for Europe.
ReplyDeleteWe already have Apple Intelligence in Europe, so now China will be catching up.
DeleteWhat is still missing in both China and the EU is Siri AI, which is still on hold. I am sure Apple are very keen to bring it over to as many countries as possible asap, as the more people are using it worldwide, the better it is for the model’s development. I have been testing Siri AI in Switzerland and it still needs a lot of fine-tuning to compete with the cloud-based models. It “thinks” for too long and struggles to find things from my mailbox in Apple Mail. Also, CarPlay Siri of iOS 26 works way better than Siri AI of iOS 27, which still needs a lot of work.
Basically, the EU people are not missing much, yet.
Probably not. China can be reasoned with, EU just wants money with fines.
DeleteRight, they allowed Vestager to sell them on legislation that makes success illegal. They see their future as NOT creating the wildly successful world class tech of tomorrow, but solidifying the control the current market leaders have, then fining those leaders.
DeleteEU-bashing is getting long in the tooth. Judging by the excerpt from the Financial Times 1/12/2023 article i below, I think your market leaders will be better off if the EU limits its perfectly legitimate DMA control mechanism to fines.
DeleteThe Chinese government has responded to a stuttering economy by backing away from the tough fines and sanctions that were a hallmark of its campaign to rein in the country’s largest tech groups, but which also scared off foreign investors. While the heavy-handed crackdown has ebbed, the government is increasingly snapping up small equity stakes in the local operations of big tech companies, as it recently did with TikTok owner ByteDance. This provides the Communist party with a mechanism to remain deeply involved in their businesses, particularly the content they broadcast to millions of Chinese people.
Have fun with Apple "Intelligence"! 🤣
ReplyDeleteHelp me understand.
ReplyDeleteApple needs the permission of the Chines government to provide this service to the people of China?
Just asking for the sake of clarification.
Are you visiting this planet?
DeleteIt's like how drug companies need the government's (FDA's) approval to provide their products to people in the U.S.
DeleteChina isn't the only one. OpenAI needed the US government's approval to give the public access to their newest GPT-5.6 model
https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-gets-us-approval-broad-gpt-56-rollout-axios-reports-2026-07-08/
/Sarcasm off
DeleteSometimes a question is a statement.
Of course. Chinese government has a strick policy on anything foreigner, this includes software.
DeleteBecause of censorship, Apple must abide to local rules and prevent its AI to say specific things that are not allowed by the Chinese government.
It's nothing new under the sun. It's the same with movies, books and any other media.
Ps: here Apple Intelligence is blocked geographically, so no matter where you bought your device: whoever enters or already is in China won't be able to use Apple Intelligence.
It really is pretty amazing to witness the amount of “doing whatever they ask “ Apple can and will do.
DeleteIt’s food for thought in the debates regarding other regions of the world.
Was your message sarcastic?
DeleteChinese authorities do what they want in China, that seems kinda obvious,no?
Which proves that Apple has already engineered Siri AI in such a way that models are interchangeable. Makes you wonder what technicalities are preventing Apple to introduce it in the EU in a timely manner.
ReplyDeleteEdit: This article seems to be about the old "Apple Intelligence", not Siri AI.
Alright, your move now, EU
ReplyDeleteApple Intelligence works in the EU just fine since iOS 18.4. There seems to be a confusion here between Apple Intelligence and the new Siri AI, which is still blocked both in China and the EU.
DeletePre-iOS 27 Apple Intelligence is running in the EU already. Siri AI is not, neither in China.
DeleteBased on the registration information, Apple submitted for approval back in June 2025. The administration approved on last Wednesday, announced it today, and I bet this is prepared for the WAIC conference that about to open in July 17.
ReplyDeleteThus China could say "we are open to foreign AI companies".
This is just Apple Intelligence (the current one) and not Siri AI, right? (the improved one in iOS 27)
ReplyDeleteHows it going for europe though??
ReplyDeleteEU already has «Apple intelligence»
Deleteits Qwen model will power Apple Intelligence functions across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS for Chinese users, including both text and image generation.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like Apple's own Foundation Models are being replaced with Qwen? I wonder if that'll make it better or worse for users there... 🤔
DeleteYeehaaa next one that we need is the new Siri for the EU
ReplyDeleteI thought Apple Intelligence will be released with iOs27?
ReplyDeleteSiri AI will.
DeleteReading through the article and comments, I have just had an idea on how Apple could possibly get Siri AI going in the EU.
ReplyDeleteSo far in iOS 27 betas, Siri AI is “embedded” into the iOS. I think this approach of making Siri AI an integrative part of iOS can potentially allow Apple to create an entirely new AI agent category (like “on-board” or “embedded” AI agent) to separate it from “external” AI agents and thus make it an exempt from the DMA? Would this work out? Was this Apple’s plan all along? Is this the reason we cannot turn off Apple Intelligence in iOS 27 as we could in iOS 18 and 26?
No, this won’t work.
DeleteThe EU doesn’t care if something is “embedded” in the OS or not, which is the crux of the disagreement. Apple says “letting any AI model have systemwide access is a huge privacy and security risk, so we only allow ours because we know the data is kept private.” The DMA says “we don’t care, if you offer an AI assistant that has systemwide access then you have to let Grok/OpenAI/Deepseek/Anthropic/anyone else who wants the ability to offer an AI assistant with systemwide access.”
Ok. Then should not the same DMA rules apply to Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini, for example?
DeleteThey do apply to Gemini on Android and (I assume) CoPilot on Windows. See below:
Deletehttps://seekingalpha.com/news/4578763-google-facing-eu-pressure-to-open-android-to-gemini-rivals---bloomberg
Hmm, I wonder how and when they will manage to move it forward then.
Delete