According to a recent report, Apple has apparently finalized on a partner to bring Apple Intelligence features to its second-largest market, China. Of course, China has strict regulations in place, which have clearly turned out to be rather difficult to navigate for Apple. Previous leaks have revealed that a Deepseek partnership was on the cards for the Cupertino giant, although that did not lead to fruition, with Apple settling for Alibaba as its primary partner. As MacRumors notes, Alibaba will function as a censorship layer of sorts, thereby complying with government-directed filtering and information control. Basically, if the Chinese government deems a certain kind of information inappropriate in any way, it can simply direct Alibaba to have it removed and not served again.

Baidu, Safari's default search engine in China, will function as a secondary partner, aiding Apple Intelligence's 'Visual Intelligence' features. If things go to plan, the AI features should roll out in China sometime towards the middle of this year. Apple Intelligence has faced quite a contentious launch, having struggled with multiple delays and widespread criticism regarding not only the real-world efficacy and usefulness of its features, but also the multiple times that its AI-generated notifications have wildly misrepresented real-life events. The report further states that iPhones sold outside of China will not have access to the China-specific AI system, which is to be expected. It is yet to be seen how the Apple Intelligence launch plays out in China, although we should be able to find out soon enough.