China releases draft rules on generative AI products; Apple, finally, sets dates for stores in India
Apple, after years of anticipation, is finally ready to open its own stores in India. The first two are coming up in Mumbai and New Delhi. They are set to open on April 18 and April 20, respectively. China’s powerful Cyberspace Administration has released draft rules to regulate generative AI products as companies such as Alibaba and Baidu launched their rival products to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, CNBC reports. Also in this brief, CapitalG invests AlphaSense, and HARMAN will open a Chennai software centre soon. Notes: Apple, revealed a small surprise on Monday, saying it will be opening a second company-owned retail store in India, in Saket, New Delhi. A retail store opening was widely expected in Mumbai, for years, and Apple last week set the date for that as April 18. The store is to be called Apple BKC. The one in New Delhi is set for an April 20 opening. Apple stores are known for the excruciating details that go into their look and feel, down to the exact placement of every single object in the store. Apple’s marketing machine has also popularised an in-store service known as the genius bar where experienced staff will help customers get their iPhones and other gadgets repaired. Chinese regulators, yesterday, released draft rules designed to manage how companies develop generative artificial intelligence products, as domestic tech giants begin rolling out products to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT, CNBC reports. On Tuesday, Alibaba unveiled Tongyi Qianwen, its generative AI product, that the e-commerce giant plans to integrate across various services. Baidu, last month also launched its equivalent, Ernie Bot, for testing, according to CNBC. The CAC’s draft measures lay out the ground rules that generative AI services have to follow, including the type of content these products are allowed to generate. The content needs to reflect the core values of socialism and should not subvert state power, according to the draft rules. Companies should ensure the data being used to train these AI models will not discriminate against people based on factors like ethnicity, race and gender, the CAC said. They also should not generate false information, the regulator added, according to CNBC. Google’s holding company Alphabet’s late-stage venture capital arm, CapitalG, has invested $100 million in a corporate data analytics startup AlphaSense, valuing the company at $1.8 billion, according to CNBC. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has fined Google 42.1 billion won (~ $32 million) for blocking developers from releasing mobile video games on a Korean competitor platform called One Store, TechCrunch reports. HARMAN, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, yesterday said it will add a new Automotive Engineering Centre in Chennai, expanding its operations in India. The company expects to recruit 200 employees in the first year of operations of the new centre. Currently, more than a third of HARMAN’s total workforce, at about 10,000 staff, work in India. Anthill Ventures, a venture capital and speed-scaling ecosystem, yesterday said it had selected five startups from Singapore for the fifth cohort of its Global Innovation Alliance Program. The fifth edition focuses on mobility, energy, real estate, waste management, water and sanitation, and smart-city applications. The five startups selected for the program are Ailytics, Bizsu, Hydroleap, sepPure, and SwiftIOT.