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Apple faces an uphill battle to launch its own artificial intelligence models for iPhones and other products in China, with a senior Beijing official warning that foreign companies will face a “long and difficult process” to gain approval at unless they associate with local groups.
Apple chief Tim Cook arrived in China on Monday for his third visit of the year as the company attempts to navigate the country’s complex regulatory regime and bring its Apple Intelligence to devices sold in the country .
In recent months, the American group has held negotiations with Chinese technology companies to help power Apple Intelligence in the country. Last month, the company began rolling out the suite of AI features in the United States on iPhones and other devices.
Apple has also considered launching its own major language models in China, according to two people familiar with the matter.
But a top Chinese tech regulator told the Financial Times that foreign groups such as Apple would face a lengthy and complex approval process to operate their own models and indicated that partnering with locals was their best option. .
The senior official at China’s Cyberspace Administration said it would be a “relatively simple and straightforward approval process” for foreign device makers to use LLMs already approved by Chinese groups.
The Chinese official was speaking on the sidelines of the World Internet Conference held last week in Wuzhen, west of Shanghai. All companies seeking to offer generative AI services to the public must go through an approval process that usually involves official tests of their LLMs.
Apple declined to comment.
The US technology group has been working this year to reinvent itself around AI, betting that consumers will upgrade their devices to access new features that won’t work on older iPhone models.
Apple’s sales in China have fallen due to a campaign to reduce iPhone use among Chinese state employees and a nationalist backlash over thorny U.S.-China relations. China.
The return of national champion Huaweiwhich has already integrated its generative AI offerings into its latest devices, poses another threat.
In the United States, Apple models offer features such as Siri, writing aids, photo editing and custom emoji generation, using a mix of on-device processing and Apple’s cloud servers . The company leveraged OpenAI’s much larger models to process more complex queries.
If Apple can’t use its own models in China, this will allow it to rely on LLMs from Chinese partners to power all the generative AI features in phones sold on the mainland.
Apple’s AI talks have included discussions with search giant Baidu, according to three people familiar with the matter. One of the people added that Apple had also spoken with technology group ByteDance and Moonshot, the start-up behind the Kimi AI chatbot.
China is Apple’s most important market outside the United States, contributing 17 percent to revenue for the year ending in September. But sales in the country fell 8 percent from the previous year.
When Cook visited Beijing last month, he told local media that the company was “working hard” on Apple Intelligence’s China debut.
“There is a very specific regulatory process behind this, and we have to complete that process,” he said. “We also hope to bring it to Chinese consumers as soon as possible.”
Samik Chatterjee, an analyst at JPMorgan, said that “China’s regulatory process remains somewhat more opaque for Apple and other international companies.”
Apple would likely take a “flexible” approach, pursuing partnerships with Baidu as well as other small companies in China, putting them in a “better position to gain approval,” he said.
Still, uncertainty surrounding the regulatory process “is likely to push the timeline for Apple Intelligence deployment (in China) into the second half of 2025” or beyond, Chatterjee said.