Apple says Mac users in China can connect to Alibaba's Qwen AI service

Apple says Mac users in China can connect to Alibaba's Qwen AI service

BEIJING, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Apple has published a guide explaining how eligible Mac users in mainland China can connect Alibaba's Qwen artificial-intelligence service to ‌the U.S. tech giant's Siri digital assistant and Writing Tools feature.

The Mac-specific arrangement ‌could help Apple compete in China's AI PC market, where it has been losing market share as domestic ​manufacturers such as Lenovo have promoted locally developed AI features.

• Qwen is Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba's family of generative-AI models, which can create text and images and analyse documents, photos and other material in response to user prompts.

• Apple's updated Chinese-language guide says users ‌who opt in can use ⁠Qwen through Siri for more detailed responses to some requests, including analysis of photos and documents. Writing Tools can also draw on the service ⁠to create text or images from a description.

• The extension is intended for Macs running macOS 26.6 or later, subject to China-specific conditions. Users must activate the extension and sign in to ​a Qwen ​account.

• Alibaba cannot use those materials to train ​or improve its models, according to ‌the guide.

• Mac shipments in mainland China fell 9% in the first quarter year on year to about 800,000 units, leaving it with 9% of the PC market, versus Lenovo's 31% and fast-growing Huawei's 16%, according to Omdia.

• Lenovo has made its Tianxi personal AI agent central to its AI-PC strategy, while Huawei is building AI functions across its HarmonyOS ‌ecosystem.

• Linking Qwen to Siri and Writing Tools gives ​Apple a locally compliant route to offer more capable ​document, image and content-creation functions while ​retaining control of the Mac interface.

• For Alibaba, integration with Apple's ‌built-in software could broaden Qwen's reach beyond ​its own applications and ​cloud services.

• Alibaba has said Qwen will be incorporated into Apple Intelligence across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro software in China, though Apple's newly published guide covers ​Macs only.

• Alibaba this week ‌released Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4-trillion-parameter model it says is its most capable to date. ​Apple's guide does not identify which Qwen model will power the Mac ​extension.

(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Susan Fenton)