Apple is said to have commenced discussions with Tencent Holdings and ByteDance to deliver its Apple Intelligence service to mainland China. As initially reported by Reuters, the approach to the Chinese heavyweights is necessary as Apple is required to work with a local AI model provider to make the expansion happen. With the talks said to be at an early stage, a conclusion is not yet in sight, but there is likely to be plenty of interest in the lucrative contract. The Chinese market is very busy, populated with several AI providers, including Baidu. It has partnered with Apple but obstacles have appeared in the way of progress, with Baidu’s LLMs experiencing issues with prompts and accuracy in response to ordinary queries.