Apple Reportedly 'Passed Over' DeepSeek as Apple Intelligence Partner

Apple in recent months "passed over" the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, according to The Information.

Apple Intelligence iPhone 16
DeepSeek has garnered significant media attention over the past few weeks, as it developed an artificial intelligence model at a lower cost and with reduced power consumption compared to competitors. However, the U.S. and some other countries have moved to ban DeepSeek on government devices due to privacy concerns.

Apple is required to work with a local Chinese company to develop artificial intelligence models for devices sold in China. The report said Apple had targeted Baidu as its partner last year, but Apple eventually decided that Baidu did not meet its standards, leading it to assess models from other companies in recent months.

The report said Apple has assessed models developed by Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance, and it appears to be moving forward on a partnership with Alibaba at this time. Apple and Alibaba have submitted a first set of artificial intelligence features that they co-developed to China's cyberspace regulator for approval, the report said.

Apple Intelligence will gain support for additional languages this year, including Chinese, according to Apple. The next set of new languages are coming in an April software update. However, this Chinese language support might be limited to countries outside of China until if and when Apple Intelligence is approved to launch there.

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Top Rated Comments

WarmWinterHat Avatar
8 months ago

AI saves me hours and hours each week these days. Some wins are bigger than others, and there are some misses, but the boost in productivity even from current gen AI is huge, for me.
I'm not allowed to use it for work, at all. My company has all AI providers blocked at the firewall, and we get disciplined if were caught using it without specific authorization. Too big of a chance of PPI leaks and errors from using data that didn't come directly from the source.

Clinical pharmacy.


Even Encyclopedia Britannica had errors and needed to be updated, so if you want to play ostrich to the revolution going around you because you're a luddite - more power to you.
Gladly! Just like you never use an encyclopedia for research, Britannica or otherwise, I won't use an LLM. I just go to the source, and skip the wasteful middleman.

Some AI is useful, in some fields. LLMs suck.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
orbital~debris Avatar
8 months ago
Sounds like Apple made a sensible assessment that lines up with the shady practices purportedly employed by DeepSeek in service of rivalling established AI players.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
brofkand Avatar
8 months ago

All AI solutions are a dumpster fire. Some are just burning dumpsters full of creosote and some are burning dumpsters full of cat crap.
None of them are truly intelligent - that is plainly obvious to people who use them. But there are absolutely levels of usefulness, and right now Apple Intelligence is firmly at the bottom of that pile.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
WarmWinterHat Avatar
8 months ago
Why just not let the end-user decide what, if any, outside AI service their phone connects to? It could easily be an API.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sw1tcher Avatar
8 months ago

The report said Apple has assessed models developed by Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance, and it appears to be moving forward on a partnership with Alibaba at this time.
In China, AI will stand for Alibaba Intelligence, not Apple Intelligence
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
hagar Avatar
8 months ago

All AI solutions are a dumpster fire. Some are just burning dumpsters full of creosote and some are burning dumpsters full of cat crap.
They are quite amazing if you know how to use them.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)