Why Apple is bringing Alibaba’s Qwen AI to Macs in China | News. az
Apple has opened a new route for Mac users in mainland China to access Alibaba’s Qwen artificial intelligence service through Apple Intelligence, as the US tech giant seeks to strengthen its position in. . .
Apple has opened a new route for Mac users in mainland China to access Alibaba’s Qwen artificial intelligence service through Apple Intelligence, as the US tech giant seeks to strengthen its position in China’s increasingly competitive AI PC market. Apple has published a Chinese-language guide explaining how eligible users can connect Qwen to Siri and the Writing Tools feature on compatible Macs,Reutersreported. The arrangement allows users to opt in to Qwen for more detailed responses to certain Siri requests, including analyzing photos and documents. Writing Tools can also use the service to generate text or images based on user descriptions. RECOMMENDED STORIESRed alert issued as Typhoon Dolphin closes in on China’s eastern coastChina raises typhoon alert as Dolphin nears east coastTyphoon Dolphin injures 6 in Japan as China braces for landfallChina opens massive AI campus built to run one million GPUs at onceThe integration is available on Macs running macOS 26. 6 or later and requires users to activate the extension and sign in to a Qwen account. Apple’s guide saysAlibabacannot use materials submitted through the service to train or improve its AI models. The move could give Apple a locally compliant way to offer more advanced AI-powered document, image and content-creation features while keeping users within the Mac interface. It could also help Apple compete in China, where domestic PC makers have been rapidly expanding their AI capabilities. Mac shipments in mainland China fell 9% year over year in the first quarter to about 800,000 units, giving Apple around 9% of the PC market, according to Omdia. Lenovo held 31%, while Huawei accounted for 16%. Lenovo has made its Tianxi personal AI agent a central part of its AI PC strategy, while Huawei is developing AI capabilities throughout its HarmonyOS ecosystem. For Alibaba, the integration provides an opportunity to bring Qwen to more users beyond its own applications and cloud services. Alibaba has previously said Qwen would be integrated into Apple Intelligence across the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro in China, although Apple’s newly published guide currently covers Macs. The companies’ AI ties come as Alibaba expands its Qwen model family. The company this week released Qwen3. 8-Max, a model with 2. 4 trillion parameters that Alibaba described as its most capable model so far. Apple’s guide does not specify which Qwen model will power the new Mac extension. News. AzBy Aysel Mammadzada