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Seeking Alpha’s daily roundup of remarks and statements that could impact the technology sector.
- Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi (OTCPK:XIACF) (OTCPK:XIACY) has launched a $35,000 electric SUV called the YU7 aimed at competing with Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Model Y, currently the most popular SUV in China.
“We’re going to face the biggest competitor and also face fierce challenge from all the other manufacturers. However, I’m very confident,” Xiaomi founder Lei Jun said at the launch event in Beijing, according to Bloomberg.
- Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) CEO Mark Benioff said AI is now doing up to 50% of his company’s work.
“AI is doing 30% to 50% of the work at Salesforce now,” Benioff said in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, noting that the technology was being used for such tasks as software development and customer service.
“All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI can do things that before we were doing,” Benioff said, adding, “We can move on to do higher-value work.”
Benioff also said that the company’s AI product aimed at handling tasks such as customer service has reached an accuracy rate of around 93%, including for major customers like Walt Disney (DIS).
- Kraken is launching a crypto-based payment app called Krak, which would likely compete with PayPal’s (PYPL) Venmo and Block’s (XYZ) Cash App.
“Krak is an all-in-one global money app built from the ground up on crypto infrastructure. It blends the familiarity of traditional finance with the speed, openness and flexibility of modern blockchain networks,” Kraken said in blog post.
- Meta (NASDAQ:META) has prevailed in a copyright lawsuit filed by 13 authors over the company’s unauthorized use of their material for Meta’s AI model Llama.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that Meta’s (NASDAQ:META) use of the materials to train its LLMs fell in the realm of “fair use” under U.S. copyright law, adding that the plaintiffs had failed to adequately argue that Meta’s actions resulted in “market harm.”
“On this record, Meta has defeated the plaintiffs’ half-hearted argument that its copying causes or threatens significant market harm,” Chhabria said, according to CNBC.
But Chhabria also noted that his ruling was limited and left the door open for similar cases.
“This is not a class action, so the ruling only affects the rights of these thirteen authors — not the countless others whose works Meta used to train its models,” Chhabria wrote. “And, as should now be clear, this ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful.”