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

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in Three Months With These 12 New Features

Saturday June 14, 2025 5:45 pm PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
apple watch ultra 2 new black

Apple Watch Ultra 3 Finally Coming After Two-Year Hiatus

Monday June 16, 2025 8:45 am PDT by
Apple will finally deliver the Apple Watch Ultra 3 sometime this year, according to analyst Jeff Pu of GF Securities Hong Kong (via @jukanlosreve). The analyst expects both the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 to arrive this year (likely alongside the new iPhone 17 lineup, if previous launches are anything to go by), according to his latest product roadmap shared with...
apple watch ultra snow

6 Features Coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3

Tuesday February 25, 2025 9:00 am PST by
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements. While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way. By the time the ...
terminal macos tahoe

Apple's Terminal App Gets Colorful Redesign in macOS Tahoe

Monday June 16, 2025 4:12 am PDT by
Apple's Terminal app is getting a visual refresh in macOS Tahoe, and it's the first notable design update since the command-line tool debuted. The updated Terminal will support 24-bit color and Powerline fonts, according to Apple's State of the Platforms presentation at WWDC25. The app will also adopt the new Liquid Glass aesthetic with redesigned themes that align with macOS 26's broader...
Logitech Logo Feature

Logitech Announces Two New Accessories for WWDC

Friday June 13, 2025 7:22 am PDT by
Alongside WWDC this week, Logitech announced notable new accessories for the iPad and Apple Vision Pro. The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26. The device incorporates six degrees of...
iPadOS 26 App Windowing

Apple Explains Why iPads Don't Just Run macOS

Friday June 13, 2025 7:46 am PDT by
iPadOS 26 allows iPads to function much more like Macs, with a new app windowing system, a swipe-down menu bar at the top of the screen, and more. However, Apple has stopped short of allowing iPads to run macOS, and it has now explained why. In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like ...
iphone 16 pro models 1

17 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 17

Thursday June 12, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you skipped the iPhone...
iOS 26 on Three iPhones

Apple Says iOS 26 Won't Be Available on These iPhone Models

Tuesday June 10, 2025 6:58 am PDT by
Apple this week revealed that iOS 26 is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer. That means that iOS 18 is the end of the road for the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, which were all released in 2018. However, those devices will continue to receive security updates for at least a few more years. iOS 26 is compatible with the following iPhone models: iPhone 16e iPhone...

Top Rated Comments

WarmWinterHat Avatar
18 weeks 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
18 weeks 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
18 weeks 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
18 weeks 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
18 weeks 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
18 weeks 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)