Apple has published a (temporary, it turns out) guide showing eligible Mac users in mainland China how to connect Alibaba’s Qwen artificial intelligence service to Siri and the company’s Writing Tools feature.
The update, detailed in a Chinese-language support document, allows users who opt in to leverage Qwen — Alibaba’s family of generative AI models — for more detailed responses through Siri, including analysis of photos and documents. Writing Tools can also draw on the service to generate text or images based on user descriptions.
The feature is available on Macs running macOS 26.6 or later, subject to China-specific conditions. Users must activate the extension and sign in to a Qwen account. According to Apple’s guide, Alibaba is prohibited from using any materials processed through the integration to train or improve its models.
The Mac-focused arrangement comes as Apple seeks to strengthen its position in China’s competitive AI PC market. The company has been losing ground to domestic rivals such as Lenovo and Huawei, which have aggressively promoted locally developed AI capabilities. Mac shipments in mainland China fell 9% year-on-year in the first quarter to about 800,000 units, giving Apple a 9% share of the PC market, according to research firm Omdia. Lenovo held 31% and Huawei 16%.
By integrating Qwen, Apple gains a locally compliant way to deliver advanced document analysis, image handling, and content-creation tools while retaining control of the Mac interface. For Alibaba, the partnership expands Qwen’s reach beyond its own apps and cloud services.
Alibaba has previously stated that Qwen will power Apple Intelligence across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro devices in China. Apple’s now unpublished guide, however, currently covered only Macs. Alibaba this week also released Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4-trillion-parameter model it describes as its most capable to date, though Apple’s documentation did not specify which Qwen version will be used in the Mac extension.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple briefly published a Chinese-language support guide on its website (around August 8, 2026) explaining how eligible Mac users in mainland China could connect Alibaba’s Qwen AI to Siri and Writing Tools. The document was titled something along the lines of “在Mac上配合Apple智能使用千问” (“Use Qwen with Apple Intelligence on Mac”).
It was removed within about a day (by August 9th). Multiple reports have confirmed the takedown. Apple customer service in China stated that the feature integrating Apple Intelligence with Qwen has not yet been officially launched in mainland China, and they had not received notice of such a release.
In a nutshell, with a support guide clearly ready to go, CCP-sanctioned AI is coming soon to Macs in China.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.