Apple Reportedly 'Passed Over' DeepSeek as Apple Intelligence Partner - MacRumors
Skip to Content

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.

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.

Popular Stories

iOS 27 on iPhone 17 1

iOS 27 Rumored to Feature All-New Siri App With 'Extensions' Feature

Sunday March 29, 2026 8:00 am PDT by
In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman discussed Apple's upcoming AI plans in more detail. As he reported last week, this will apparently include a Siri app with a so-called "Extensions" feature across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27. With the Siri app, the report said that iPhone, iPad, and Mac users would be able to interact with Apple's assistant in both text and voice...
Apple Intelligence General Feature 2

Apple Intelligence Accidentally Goes Live in China Before Regulatory Approval

Monday March 30, 2026 12:48 pm PDT by
Apple accidentally started rolling out Apple Intelligence features in China before receiving regulatory approval, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Some Chinese users began seeing Apple Intelligence features listed as available and active in the Settings app on their iPhones, but Apple made no formal announcement. Gurman says that Apple is not planning to launch the feature imminently, and...
iOS 27 on iPhone 17 1

Apple to Unveil iOS 27 in June With These New Features Beyond Siri

Friday April 17, 2026 8:40 am PDT by
Apple is expected to unveil iOS 27 during its WWDC 2026 keynote on June 8, and the update should be released in September. Below, we outline some of the new features that are rumored to be coming with iOS 27, beyond the long-awaited more personalized version of Siri. iOS 27 will reportedly support 5G satellite internet connectivity, although this functionality might be limited to the...

Top Rated Comments

WarmWinterHat Avatar
16 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)
16 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)
orbital~debris Avatar
16 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)
WarmWinterHat Avatar
16 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
16 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)
16 months ago

Why is Apple cozying up with Chinese Communist Party proxies to provide artificial intelligence? That does not seem very intelligent at all.
...In China.

Outside of China they use their own internal AI models and can, if the user opts in, use OpenAI.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)