Report: Apple Struggling to Adapt Apple Intelligence for China

[MacRumors]

Apple is struggling to work with Chinese tech company Baidu to bring Apple Intelligence to China next year, The Information reports.

While it is now available in the United States and several other regions, Apple Intelligence is not available in China due to the country's restrictive security, privacy, and content obligations, which demands that any public AI technology obtains regulatory approval. This led Apple to partner directly with Baidu, a Chinese company, to deliver Apple Intelligence features in the country expediently.

Citing two individuals said to be familiar with the situation, the report claims that Apple and Baidu are racing to adapt the latter's most advanced large language model, Ernie 4.0, to work well for iPhone users both via the cloud and on-device. Apparently, the models have had difficulty understanding prompts and providing accurate responses to common scenarios.

While Baidu wants results to be driven by data used to train its model, Apple wants it to provide a more personalized answer based on a user's iPhone usage. Likewise, the two companies have clashed over the use of iPhone user data to train and improve the AI models. Baidu reportedly wants to save and analyze data from iPhone users, but this is forbidden under Apple's privacy commitments.

The issues are particularly notable since Apple hopes to use Apple Intelligence to rejuvenate iPhone sales in China, where revenue has declined for three consecutive years due to heightened competition from local smartphone brands such as Huawei that tout a wide array of AI features.

Unlike its collaboration with OpenAI, which reportedly comes at no cost to either company, Apple is actively paying Baidu a fee to use its AI models and has agreed to cover computing costs. Apple already uses Baidu for default search results in Safari and Siri.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: Report: Apple Struggling to Adapt Apple Intelligence for China

 

[abatabia]

Apple struggling to adapt Apple intelligence. There, fixed it.

 

[dannyyankou]

Report: Apple Struggling to Censor Adapt Apple Intelligence for China​

 

[g-7]

OK, adapt it for EU then.

 

[komuh]

New title: Apple Struggling in competitive market

 

[Victor Mortimer]

If there's any country Apple should pull out of, it's China.

 

[Villarrealadrian]

As always Apple doing what china commands

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Apple should just buy China? 😉

 

[Rodney Williams]

I'm just not feeling this whole business thing with China. Something is off, and I can't put my finger on it. What is it about China that these major American tech conglomerates are so invested in? I know cheap labor is one of those reasons. But there is more to this than the public realize.

 

[henrymyf]

It's surprising that China is not totally banning Apple Intelligence for national security reasons, the same as that the US is banning TikTok.

 

[HylianKnight]

Apple struggling to adapt Apple intelligence. There, fixed it.

I chuckled more at this comment than I should have. All snark aside, I think Apple is doing an OK job with the Apple Intelligence so far.

 

[HylianKnight]

I'm just not feeling this whole business thing with China. Something is off, and I can't put my finger on it. What is it about China that these major American tech conglomerates are so invested in? I know cheap labor is one of those reasons. But there is more to this than the public realize.

Cheap labor and massive market.

 

[HylianKnight]

As always Apple doing what china commands

If a company wants to do business somewhere, then that company has very few options available to it.

 

[applesith]

Aren't most AI companies/products going to struggle in China? I do not see how this would be unique to Apple.

 

[DelayedGratificationGene]

sounds like normal inevitable items that come up during a huge partnership. Apple and Baidu will inevitably figure it out and probably sooner rather than later.

 

[boast]

Maybe a 1 billion dollar investment can help grease the wheels

 

[Plutonius]

I think it's more like protectionism on China's part.

 

[siddavis]

Apple struggling with communism.

 

[airwalk331]

Could it be that Apple Intelligence is just not that good?? This has been my experience.

 

[63W]

Have they tried giving them $10 billion?? 😂

 

[winxmac]

In 2018, Apple introduced dual SIM iPhones [XR and XS] - physical and e-SIM - but in China, dual physical SIM...

In 2024, Apple announced Apple Intelligence as part of iOS 18 during WWDC, which is still in the works and is rolled out slowly to some countries...

2024 is about to end and it's almost 2025, is e-SIM still not available in China? I still prefer dual physical SIM but are we expecting Apple to bring Apple Intelligence in China [in a short amount of time] and succeed when e-SIM is still not available there? Correct me if I'm wrong [regarding e-SIM] for those who are living or has gone to China...

 

[hyperactiv8]

I'm just not feeling this whole business thing with China. Something is off, and I can't put my finger on it. What is it about China that these major American tech conglomerates are so invested in? I know cheap labor is one of those reasons. But there is more to this than the public realize.

Over 1 billion prospective customers. It’s easy to see why they want to be there. However, I don’t like it either.

 

[Bogstandard]

*cough* "baidu, hey baidu" *cough*.
Solved 😉

 

[bhirt37]

If we could all be so lucky and live in china. Jokes aside, Apple Intellegence is terrible. I have been running all the dev betas and am completely unimpressed. The summaries are so bad, it changes the meaning of what the actual author wrote. It bothers me that coworkers and others will skip my emails and messages and rely on the AI generated summaries and come to a completely different conclusion than what I was saying. I wish there was a way to opt out of having what you write be transformed by really bad AI into garbage on the other end. Summaries are just one of the many terrible things.

I find it shocking that I am saying this, because I am really a big fan of LLMs and use them every day. I am not some “AI STEAL MAH JOB AND DESTROY DA WORLD”

 

[andrewxgx]

Apple Struggling to Adapt Apple Intelligence
FTFY