BEIJING, China: Apple has published a guide showing how eligible Mac users in mainland China can connect Alibaba's Qwen artificial intelligence service to Siri and Apple's Writing Tools, expanding AI features for users in the country.

The Mac-specific arrangement could strengthen Apple's position in China's AI PC market, where it has been losing market share as domestic manufacturers promote locally developed AI capabilities.

According to Apple's updated Chinese-language guide, users who opt in can use Qwen through Siri for more detailed responses to certain requests, including the analysis of photos and documents. Apple's Writing Tools can also use the service to generate text or images from a description.

The feature is available on Macs running macOS 26.6 or later, subject to China-specific requirements. Users must enable the extension and sign in to a Qwen account.

Apple's guide states that Alibaba cannot use the materials processed through the service to train or improve its AI models.

Qwen is Alibaba's family of generative AI models that can generate text and images, as well as analyze documents, photographs and other content in response to user prompts.

The integration provides Apple with a locally compliant way to offer enhanced document, image and content-creation capabilities while maintaining control of the Mac interface.

For Alibaba, the arrangement could extend Qwen's reach beyond its own applications and cloud services through integration with Apple's built-in software.

Alibaba has previously said Qwen would be incorporated into Apple Intelligence across the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro in China, although Apple's newly published guide covers Macs only.

Earlier this week, Alibaba released Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4-trillion-parameter model that it described as its most capable AI model to date. Apple's guide does not specify which Qwen model powers the new Mac integration.