OpenAI hires its first official in India
OpenAI has hired its first Indian official, reported Bloomberg over the weekend. Pragya Misra, 39, will head government relations at the AI startup behind ChatGPT and is set to start her duties later in April, according to the outlet. However, the appointment has not yet been officially confirmed by OpenAI. As governments worldwide ponder how to regulate the burgeoning AI industry and experimental large language models, it is key for tech companies to comply with national regulations and stay on good terms with various regimes.
Some weeks ago, Google came under fire in India after its Gemini chatbot answered a question about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and whether or not his actions were fascist. As millions prepare to head to polls worldwide, generative AI firms are racing to label synthetic media across platforms to prevent election-related misinformation and voter deception.
Bollywood actors targeted in political deepfakes
Activists and experts warned of a potential surge in deepfakes in the runup to India’s 2024 general elections. Their predictions turned out to be accurate, as Bollywood actors Aamir Khan and Ranveer Singh both distanced themselves from recently identified deepfakes featuring their likenesses. In Khan’s case, the clip edited with AI purportedly showed him endorsing a political party, which the actor’s spokesperson quickly denied. An FIR was filed concerning the matter. In Singh’s case, the deepfake showed him expressing his political views. The actor warned his social media followers to be vigilant.
Voice cloning technology tools allow users to create complex but synthetic audio using just a few seconds of an original sample. While firms such as OpenAI have prevented their voice cloning tech from being publicly released at the current moment, there are many unregulated deepfake-creation tools online that malicious users can access in order to create fake media.
Tech stocks fall over the weekend
The weekend saw the stock prices of several AI and tech companies plunging after months of gains thanks to the generative AI boom. Nvidia in particular dropped by around 10%, wiping at least $200 billion from its value. Other tech giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla also recorded drops in the past week.
Some possible factors behind the sudden fall could include upcoming earnings reports, industry-specific events, or market pressure in the semiconductor sector. Nvidia last year joined the $1 trillion company club as more companies turned to its advanced chips and hardware in order to develop the energy-hungry large language models such as ChatGPT.
Published - April 22, 2024 02:20 pm IST
