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South China Morning Post
22 minutes ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong has been, and always will be, a very special Chinese city
So, Hong Kong is not going down the drain after all. What a relief! At least that's the latest reassessment of Stephen Roach, who is something of a big potato among the China commentariat. Some 16 months ago, the former Morgan Stanley, Asia boss seemed to have finally joined the 'death of Hong Kong' brigade, having declared that it is 'just another Chinese city' now. His claim – 'it pains me to say Hong Kong is over' – caused a bit of a shock because his views were usually considered moderate and measured. Actually, we are still 'just like any other big Chinese city', he concluded in a recent Financial Times op-ed, like 'Shenzhen with its technology, Guangzhou with its advanced manufacturing'. Hong Kong is 'special' only for its 'role as China's major international financial centre'. Well, Hong Kong had long been the main foreign exchange and investment funding source for communist China even under the British. Its functions may have expanded, but its key financial role remains. Not much has changed. Roach said he used three 'Hong Kong is over' metrics: worsening governance and collapsed autonomy; declining economy tied to the rest of the nation; and a victim caught in the US-China rivalry. It is the last criterion that Roach has changed his mind on, rather than the first two. Actually, he is a Johnny-come-lately. A while back, this newspaper, among others, was already pointing out how the city's capital market was roaring back, with its initial public offerings poised to regain the global top spot. Meanwhile, the Hang Seng Index has vastly outperformed the S&P 500 in the United States this year. Roach now admits: 'Hong Kong has benefited from the more powerful strain of financial decoupling between the US and China.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Business
- Telegraph
BBC threatens to sue US tech start-up for ripping off news stories
The BBC is threatening to sue a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) company accusing it of ripping off the broadcaster's news stories. The corporation has reportedly written to Perplexity AI, a search engine rival to Google, saying it has seen evidence that the company's AI model was trained using BBC articles. The letter, which was sent to Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity's chief, threatened an injunction against the American company unless it stops scraping BBC stories, deletes all existing copies of the broadcaster's content and submits a 'proposal for financial compensation'. Perplexity has been contacted for comment. The company told the Financial Times, which first reported the letter, that the BBC's claims were 'manipulative and opportunistic', adding that the broadcaster had 'a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law'. It said: '[The claims] also show how far the BBC is willing to go to preserve Google's monopoly for its own self-interest.' The legal salvo marks are the first time the BBC has entered the escalating debate over AI and copyright. High-profile companies and bosses across the creative industries have accused tech firms of disregarding copyright laws by using their material to train AI models without permission. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, which are owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, have both already sued Perplexity for copyright infringement. Meanwhile, The New York Times has launched legal action against ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Hollywood giant Disney and record labels Universal and Sony are among other major media companies to have launched legal action. AI licencing deals The BBC, which is primarily funded through the licence fee, has reportedly held discussions with tech firms including Amazon about licencing its content to be used for AI. But the legal action suggests growing concerns at the corporation that its articles have already been ripped off. It comes at a critical time for the BBC, which is locked in discussions with ministers over the future of the licence fee funding model. Any AI licencing deals could prove a vital new source of revenue at a time when the broadcaster has been forced to make heavy cuts to balance the books. Perplexity, which was founded in 2022, is an AI-powered search engine that allows users to search the web by asking questions in a conversational style. It runs a default language model and also provides subscribers with access to others including Chat GPT and Claude. The company, which counts Amazon founder Jeff Bezos among its investors, has more than 30m users and is closing in on fresh funding that would give it a valuation of $14bn (£10.4bn). In the letter, the BBC reportedly accused Perplexity of reproducing parts of its news stories verbatim, arguing that the company was diverting readers away from its website. The BBC also raised concerns that AI search engines were inserting factual inaccuracies or removing context from articles, which it warned could damage the broadcaster's reputation for impartial journalism. It said: 'It is therefore highly damaging to the BBC, injuring the BBC's reputation with audiences – including UK licence fee-payers who fund the BBC – and undermining their trust in the BBC.'
Time of India
6 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Musk's X to offer investment, trading in 'super app' push: Report
X CEO Linda Yaccarino has said users will soon be able to make investments or trades on the social media platform, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, a move to support billionaire owner Elon Musk 's vision to create an "everything app." In an interview with the publisher, Yaccarino said the company was exploring the introduction of an X credit or debit card, which could come as soon as this year. Musk, who in April 2022 clinched a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter and later rebranded it as X, has signaled plans to model it as a "super app," similar to China's WeChat. The social media platform did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. "2025 X will connect you in ways never thought possible. X TV, X Money, Grok and more," Yaccarino wrote in a post in December last year. Payment s giant Visa and X partnered to offer direct payment solutions to customers of the social media app, a person familiar with the matter said earlier this year. A super app, or what Musk refers to as an "everything app," has been described as the Swiss army knife of mobile apps, offering a suite of services for users such as messaging, social networking, payments and e-commerce shopping. X hired NBCUniversal advertising chief Yaccarino as CEO in 2023 amid advertiser exodus from the platform as they worried that their ads could appear next to inappropriate content. Yaccarino said that 96% of X's ad clients prior to acquisition had now come back to the platform, the Financial Times report said. The company is poised for its first year of ad revenue growth this year since its acquisition by Musk, according to data from research firm Emarketer in March. X had filed a lawsuit in federal court in Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers, accusing them of unlawfully conspiring to boycott the site and causing it to lose revenue.
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First Post
6 hours ago
- Politics
- First Post
Even as UK holds talks in Geneva, Starmer prepares to support US in any Iran mission: Report
Even as British Foreign Minister David Lammy is meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the crisis in West Asia, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has discussed options about potentially supporting any US attacks on Iran if negotiations fail. read more Even as British Foreign Secretary David Lammy is scheduled to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has held discussions about supporting any US strikes on Iran. US President Donald Trump has given one last chance to negotiations with Israel to reach a deal for a ceasefire and the country's nuclear programme. He has indicated that he would join Israel in attacking Iran if a deal could not be reached. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Lammy will join his counterparts from France and Germany to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi on Friday. A day before the meeting, Lammy held talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Reuters has separately reported that the meeting has been coordinated with the United States. UK hopes for a deal but prepares for offensive The United Kingdom (UK) is central in Western nations' negotiations with Iran. As the UK continues to have an embassy in Iran, the nation is a key channel between Iran and the West, including the United States. Lammy has said that ongoing talks must bring the conflict to an end. Referring to the two weeks' window that Trump has offered Iran, Lammy said, 'We are determined that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon… A window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution. Now is the time to put a stop to the grave scenes in the Middle East and prevent a regional escalation that would benefit no one.' Among the scenarios that Starmer has discussed are allowing the US military to use the British base of Diego Garcia to attack Iran, providing logistical support, and joining US forces in the military campaign, according to The Times. Starmer has put his Cabinet on the alert about a potential US attack on Iran and the possibility of joining those attacks, as per Financial Times. The newspaper has reported that Starmer has held discussions with his ministers, military chiefs, and intelligence chiefs, and discussed how to respond if Iran would 'directly or indirectly threatened UK assets in the region'. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'If our assets are threatened, then we have a right to self-defence, with or without the Americans. But obviously, in that case, we would want to work with the Americans given their superior power against the Iranian threat,' one person briefed on the matter told the newspaper.
CNA
9 hours ago
- Business
- CNA
BBC threatens legal action against AI start-up Perplexity over content scraping, FT reports
UK broadcaster BBC is threatening legal action against AI search engine Perplexity, as it seeks to crack down on tech companies scraping its vast content archives to train artificial intelligence models, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
