After two years of waiting, the first iOS 27.3 developer beta has introduced Apple Intelligence to China, bringing some of its AI features to the country.
The long wait for Apple Intelligence in China started in 2024 after its introduction in the U.S. Two years later, and after Apple confirmed its impending arrival on Saturday, Apple Intelligence is now making an officially sanctioned appearance in China.
Rolling out as part of the iOS 27.3 developer beta, the first wave won't be the full Apple Intelligence experience. Instead it will mirror a lot of the earlier incarnations of Apple Intelligence.
Those initial features include tools for Photos, including Clean Up to eliminate unwanted items from images, as well as memory videos and natural language search. There's also Visual Intelligence using the iPhone camera and smart emoji generation.
Writing tools are also present, complete with options to proofread, rewrite, and summarize text. It can also generate notification summaries and email summaries.
Smart Reply will quickly suggest responses to messages. Meanwhile, Notes gains audio transcription, and calls can get transcribed and summarized.
The update stops short of adding Siri AI, which only became available to users in other countries in 2026.
Getting Apple Intelligence to the iPhone has been difficult for Apple, due to Chinese regulations. It had to seek out various local partners who had approved models it could use for the same services.
In its announcement, Apple says it uses generative models built by Apple, and is also working with Alibaba to add Qianwen support within Siri.
Apple plans to properly launch Apple Intelligence in China with iOS 27.3's public release in December.
