A partnership with Tencent or ByteDance needed to materialize into a proper deal for Apple Intelligence to officially roll out in China, but it appears that the California-based giant has been unable to get the fortune to favor it until recently. A new rumor is doing the rounds, stating that DeepSeek, which has now established itself as a worthy competitor to the likes of OpenAI and others, could end up allying with Apple and leverage its artificial intelligence models to bring generative AI features to the masses.
DeepSeek’s low-cost approach might be favored for Apple Intelligence, as it has been reported to produce equivalent or better than its rivals
Features that fall under the Apple Intelligence umbrella will eventually be added to the portfolio. Thankfully, the company has various companies overseas and their chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to integrate into a multitude of services to elevate the user experience. In China, such possibilities do not exist due to regulatory issues that require government approval, and assuming these approvals were being examined, it would likely take months before a positive reply was given.
Unfortunately, time is not an element that is in abundance for Apple, but DeepSeek could provide the solution that the firm seeks. According to Fixed Focus Digital’s post on Weibo, which was spotted by tipster @Jukanlosreve, mentions a possible partnership between DeepSeek and Apple. If there are doubts about privacy, the post mentions that iOS 19 will address that obstacle for the Chinese version while enabling open-source and low-cost access to the U.S., Europe, and Hong Kong.
Given that ByteDance was recently reported to have increased its capital expenditure to $22 billion, the operational scale of TikTok’s parent company might have compelled Apple to join forces. However, DeepSeek has proven that exorbitant funds are unnecessary to introduce advanced AI models like R1, which compete or deliver better results than its rivals. The only problem is whether the U.S. government will let this partnership slide. After all, DeepSeek was recently banned from being used by Pentagon employees, so how long before this ban hits nationwide?
Note that the report is allegedly in its testing phase, so we cannot comment on the veracity of these claims. What we do know is that during a talk with CNBC, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that regions that witnessed the Apple Intelligence rollout had higher iPhone 16 shipments, which only means that there is no time like the present to get the momentum running and fast.
News Source: Fixed Focus Digital
