China tries to exert control over Apple Intelligence launch there

A top government official has warned that an Apple Intelligence launch in China would be a “difficult and long process” unless the iPhone maker partners with a local AI company. Working with a Chinese company would instead be “simple and straightforward.”

Apple had reportedly been exploring using its own generative AI models in China, but a top regulator has strongly implied that this wouldn’t be in the Cupertino company’s best interests …

Any company wanting to launch a generative AI product in China needs approval from a regulator. The Financial Times reports that the regulator in question has just given a pretty clear indication on what the government expects.

Apple is facing an uphill battle to release its own artificial intelligence models for iPhones and other products in China, with a top Beijing official warning that foreign companies will confront a “difficult and long process” to win approval unless they partner with local groups […]

The high-ranking official at the Cyberspace Administration of China said it would be a comparatively “simple and straightforward approval process” for foreign device makers to use already vetted LLMs (large language model, aka generative AI) from Chinese groups.

Two sources cited by the FT said that Apple has been considering using its own LLMs in China, but has also been in talks with Chinese tech companies.

The Chinese government exerts a tight stranglehold on sources of online information within the country. Google pulled out of the country after it was forced to censor search results, and many other western platforms are blocked by the Great Firewall of China, including Facebook, X, and Wikipedia. Many search terms are also blocked when using the locally-owned Baidu search engine.

AI products of course provide another means of effectively carrying out web searches, and it’s clear the government wants to be able to control these too, hence effectively forcing foreign companies to use approved Chinese-owned models.

Apple has already seen iPhone sales in China plummet after the government banned their use by officials, and suggested it was unpatriotic for its citizens to buy a phone from a foreign-owned company.

A JP Morgan analyst said that Apple would probably take a “flexible” approach in order to get approval, but even so the Apple Intelligence launch in China would likely be pushed into the second half of 2025.

The FT said that Apple declined to comment on the report.

9to5Mac’s Take

While it would be nice to imagine Apple would resist this pressure, the reality is that it will inevitably acquiesce. China is simply too important to the company, not just because it accounts for 17% of Apple’s global sales, but because it remains the Cupertino company’s most important manufacturing center.

As CEO Tim Cook said only yesterday: “We could not do what we do without them [Chinese suppliers].”

In many cases, Apple has been forced to do unsavoury things like remove VPN apps and US news apps from the App Store in order to comply with the law. In this case, it could in theory simply decide not to launch Apple Intelligence in China, but the commercial and political risks are likely too high to make this feasible.

9to5Mac collage of images from Apple and Sean Sinclair on Unsplash