Apple Intelligence is coming to China without the new Siri

Tim Cook told The Paper, a state-backed Chinese outlet, that Apple Intelligence has been approved in China and that a test version is due later in October, Reuters reported. That test version gets live translation, writing tools and image clean-up, and it doesn’t include Siri AI. China Daily reported the same first batch of features, with the AI-powered Siri left out of the initial rollout.

It took two years and a regulator to get here. Apple Intelligence debuted in 2024 and sat delayed in the Chinese market until the Cyberspace Administration of China approved Apple’s AI services this July, TechCrunch reported.

Whose AI is answering now depends on which side of the border you’re on. Reuters says the model Apple built for China was developed in partnership with Alibaba. When approval came, Alibaba said its Qwen models would be integrated for “text and image understanding and generation,” and a Baidu spokesperson said it was working with Apple on features for Chinese users, according to TechCrunch.

I argued in my YouTube video on Apple’s home hub that Apple’s home plans live or die on Siri. MacRumors, citing Bloomberg, reported that the wider launch in China is planned for iOS 27.3 in December, and that Siri AI won’t be available then either, with Image Playground and the newer Genmoji missing as well.

Apple’s own feature availability page says some features aren’t available in every region or language, and it lists a long run of Apple Intelligence features as not available in China mainland. If you buy an iPhone in one country and use it in another, or you’re shopping for family overseas, I’d check that page for the country and the language first. And if you’re in mainland China, I’d let the test version land and see what it does before paying for a new phone to get it.

It’s the same phone on both sides of the border, and a different assistant inside it.