The White House and congressional officials are scrutinizing Apple’s partnership with Chinese tech giant Alibaba to bring AI features to iPhones in China, according to a new report from The New York Times.
The Apple-Alibaba deal was announced in February when Alibaba Group chairman Joe Tsai confirmed the deal. Apple Intelligence in China will rely on Alibaba’s Qwen model, satisfying the Chinese government’s preference for a China-based AI model.
Alibaba is one of the world’s largest retailers and e-commerce companies. In 2020, it was also rated as the fifth-largest artificial intelligence company.
However, the Trump administration says it’s concerned that the deal would help a Chinese company improve its artificial intelligence abilities, broaden the reach of Chinese chatbots with censorship limits and deepen Apple’s exposure to Beijing laws over censorship and data sharing.
The New York Times says that the scrutiny is the latest example of the challenges that Apple has run into as it tries to sustain its businesses in the United States and China at a time of rising geopolitical tensions. Three years ago, the U.S. government succeeded in pressuring the company to abandon a deal to buy memory chips from a Chinese supplier, the Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation, or YMTC. More recently, the company has been challenged by U.S. tariffs on Chinese-made products like the iPhone, threatening to cut into the company’s profits.
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