Ammon News - Apple is reportedly planning to release a censored version of its anticipated artificial intelligence features in China in the middle of this year in collaboration with local tech giants like Alibaba and Baidu.

The Silicon Valley giant has been working to adapt its Apple Intelligence platform for China for a rollout expected as early as May, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Apple’s share rose by about 2 per cent on Thursday after announcing its AI partnership with the Chinese giant Alibaba.

To ensure its AI models provide outputs filtered to comply with Chinese censorship, Apple is reportedly relying on local software makers Alibaba and Baidu.

China is the second biggest market for Apple after the US, but the iPhone maker has suffered declining sales in the country.

Apple’s iPhone sales in China dropped to 43 million units in 2024 from about 52 million the previous year.

Analysts have flagged a rise in competition from local Chinese phone brands and Apple falling behind in the adoption of AI technology as potential reasons for the sales decline.

China has also come up with a powerful new AI model DeepSeek, becoming a strong competitor to American firm OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform.

The DeepSeek AI model’s responses to some user queries have also been observed to align closely with narratives spread by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Independent