TMTPOST -- Apple Inc. seems closer to rollout of Apple Intelligence, its advanced personal artificial intelligence (AI) system, in China with the help from local partners including Alibaba Group and Baidu, Inc.

Credit：Apple CEO Tim Cook Weibo Account

Apple aims to bring AI features to China by the middle of the year or as soon as May, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Apple was reported to mainly rely on two Chinese partners to achieve its goal in the face of regulatory hurdles: Alibaba and Baidu.

According to the report, Alibaba has played a role in creation of an on-device system that can analyze and modify Apple’s AI models for iPhone, iPad and Mac users in China. Through Alibaba software as a layer atop Apple’s own on-device AI models, the system will filter and censor the AI output to ensure that it complies with the Chinese government’s requirements. Alibaba will ask Apple to make changes to AI models under the direction of the government if any prohibited content is found in the information delivered to users.

The report noted the new AI system is tailored specifically for the Chinese market, so customers who buy an iPhone outside China and bring it to the country wont’s make use of the system.

Baidu, as a secondary partner, will power other AI features such as Visual Intelligence, for which the current Apple Intelligence available in U.S.  relies on Google and OpenAI, according to the report. It suggested Baidu may replace OpenAI with the ChatGPT-like integration in Siri digital assistant.

In case of some more complex tasks, Apple Intelligence now resorts to external servers to process requests in a system what Apple calls a Private Cloud Compute. In China, Apple may rely on  AIPO Cloud (Guizhou) Technology Co. Ltd (GCBD) to handle the process such AI processing, per the report. The state affiliate has already operated iCloud for the mainland China market.

The report shed a light on Apple’s efforts to roll out Apple Intelligence in China. The Cupertino-based company is facing more uncertainties amid increasing China-U.S. tensions at a tough time, in which its sales in China unexpectedly shed 11% during the holiday season. That was the steepest decline since the quarter ended December 2023. The underdeliver was driven by a decline in iPhone sales, highlighting stiff competition in the world’s largest smartphone market and absence of the company’s much-touted Apple Intelligence platform.

Apple recently started working with Alibaba to offer AI features on its devices such as the iPhone in China, The Information reported reported on Tuesday. The report suggested the partnership made significant progress as two companies have submitted the AI features they co-developed for regulatory approval.

Apple last year chose Baidu to be the primary partner for rollout of AI features in China but Baidu’s AI models failed to meet Apple standards, so the iPhone maker began to weigh other optional Chinese models developed by Tencent, ByteDance, Alibaba and DeepSeek, according to the report. It said Apple didn’t select DeepSeek model for the upstart lacked the manpower and experience to serve a large customer like Apple.

Alibaba Group Chairman Joseph Chung-Hsin Tsai on Thursday confirmed his company is joining hands with Apple to offer AI features on iPhone in China.  “Apple has been very selective, and talked to a number of companies in China. And in the end, they choose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones,” Tsai said.

Baidu  is still a partner for Apple to develop AI features in China even though the new partner Alibaba onboarded, The Information reported the same day. Baidu’s length as a partner is its development of an AI-powered search feature that can handle images and text and upgrades to the Chinese version of Siri voice assistant, as these features are part of a suite of functions known as Apple Intelligence, according to the report.