On August 3, 2026, Alibaba released Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4 trillion parameter model with 95 billion active per token, and said its weights will be open-sourced within a week. It is the first time a Qwen-Max-class model leaves the API, and it would be the largest open frontier-class release to date.
China's Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services took effect on July 15, 2026, requiring any AI that simulates human personality to ship anti-addiction systems, mandatory usage-time notifications, instant-exit mechanisms and real-time detection of emotional over-dependence. ByteDance's Doubao, China's biggest AI app with 345 million monthly users, deleted its custom AI agents entirely rather than retrofit them, and Alibaba's Qwen did the same. Doubao users' agent data stays read-only until October 15, then is deleted forever.
On July 15, 2026, Apple Intelligence was registered with the Cyberspace Administration of China, the approval Apple needed to switch on AI features for mainland iPhone users. Alibaba's Qwen model will power Apple Intelligence across iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS, handling text and image generation, with Baidu helping develop additional AI tools. No launch date yet; registration usually precedes rollout by a few months, lining up with Apple's fall software cycle.
China's 'Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services' took effect on July 15, 2026, requiring any AI that simulates human personality to ship anti-addiction systems, usage-time notifications, instant-exit mechanisms and real-time detection of emotional over-dependence. ByteDance's Doubao, China's biggest AI app with 345 million monthly users, deleted its custom agents entirely rather than retrofit them, and Alibaba's Qwen did the same. Doubao agent data stays read-only until October 15, then is deleted forever.