May 17 (Reuters) - The White House and congressional

officials have been scrutinizing Apple's ( AAPL ) plan to strike

a deal with Alibaba ( BABA ) to make the Chinese company's AI

available on iPhones in China, The New York Times reported on

Saturday.

The paper, citing three people familiar with the

deliberations, said U.S. authorities were concerned that the

deal would help a Chinese company to improve its artificial

intelligence capacities, broaden the reach of Chinese chatbots

with censorship limits and deepen Apple's ( AAPL ) exposure to Beijing

laws over censorship and data sharing.