Artificial Einstein: ByteDance's viral AI video model brings photos to life
ByteDance , the tech giant behind TikTok , has introduced an artificial intelligence (AI) model that is gaining widespread attention for its ability to transform photos and sound bites into realistic videos, underscoring China's growing capabilities in the field.
The company's OmniHuman-1 multimodal model can create vivid videos of people speaking, singing, and moving with a quality 'significantly outperforming existing audio-conditioned human video-generation methods', the ByteDance team behind the product said in a paper. AI-generated images, videos and audio of real people are often referred to as deepfakes, a technology becoming more prominent in cases of fraud as well as more harmless uses for entertainment.
ByteDance has become one of the hottest AI companies in China. Its Doubao app is currently the most popular consumer-facing AI app in the country. It has not released the OmniHuman-1 to the public yet, but sample clips have gone viral.
One notable demo features a 23-second video of Albert Einstein delivering a speech. TechCrunch's Kyle Wiggers described the app's output as 'shockingly good' and 'perhaps the most realistic deepfake videos to date'.
The model highlights the advancements Chinese developers are making despite Washington's efforts to curb the country's AI progress. The launch follows OpenAI widening the release of its video-generation tool Sora, which was made publicly available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro users in December.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
HKFP
2 hours ago
- HKFP
US President Trump says deal with Chinese leader Xi ‘extremely hard' as steel tariffs double
Donald Trump said on Wednesday that it was 'extremely hard' to reach a deal with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, but the EU touted progress in its own trade talks with Washington even though the US president doubled global metal tariffs. Trump's latest trade moves came as OECD ministers gathered in Paris to discuss the outlook for the world economy in light of a US hardball approach that has rattled world markets. Trump's sweeping tariffs on allies and adversaries have strained ties with trading partners and sparked a flurry of negotiations to avoid the duties. The White House has suggested the president will speak to Xi this week, raising hopes they can soothe tensions and speed up a trade deal between the world's two biggest economies. However, early Wednesday, Trump appeared to dampen hopes for a quick deal. 'I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!' he posted on his Truth Social platform. Asked about the remarks during a regular press briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said: 'The Chinese side's principles and stance on developing Sino-US relations are consistent.' China was the main target of Trump's April tariff blitz, hit with levies of 145 percent on its goods and triggering tit-for-tat tariffs of 125 percent on US goods. Both sides agreed to temporarily de-escalate in May, after Trump delayed most sweeping measures on other countries until July 9. His latest remarks came hours after he increased his tariffs on aluminum and steel from 25 percent to 50 percent, raising temperatures with various partners while exempting Britain from the higher levy. EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic said after talks with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on the sidelines of the OECD meeting in Paris that raising the metal tariffs 'doesn't help the negotiations'. The two sides were nonetheless 'making progress' in their negotiations, Sefcovic said at a news conference. Goods from the 27-nation bloc will be hit with 50-percent tariffs on July 9 unless it reaches a deal with Washington. The EU has vowed to retaliate. 'We did very much focus on these negotiations, and I still believe in them,' Sefcovic said, adding that he was optimistic that a 'positive result' could be reached. Steel tariffs The OECD cut its forecast for global economic growth on Tuesday, blaming Trump's tariff blitz for the downgrade. 'We need to come up with negotiated solutions as quickly as possible, because time is running out,' German economy minister Katherina Reiche warned. French trade minister Laurent Saint-Martin said: 'We have to keep our cool and always show that the introduction of these tariffs is in no one's interest.' Canada, the largest supplier of the metals to the United States, has called Trump's tariffs 'illegal and unjustified'. After talks between UK Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and Greer on Tuesday, London said imports from the UK would remain at 25 percent for now. Both sides needed to work out duties and quotas in line with the terms of a recently signed trade pact. 'We're pleased that as a result of our agreement with the US, UK steel will not be subject to these additional tariffs,' a British government spokesperson said. White House wants offers The Group of Seven advanced economies — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — was due to hold separate talks on trade Wednesday. Mexico will request an exemption from the higher tariff, Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard said, arguing that it was unfair because the United States exports more steel to its southern neighbour than it imports. 'It makes no sense to put a tariff on a product in which you have a surplus,' Ebrard said. Mexico is highly vulnerable to Trump's trade wars because 80 percent of its exports go to the United States, its main partner. While some of Trump's most sweeping levies face legal challenges, they have been allowed to remain in place for now as an appeals process takes place. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Tuesday that the Trump administration sent letters to governments pushing for offers by Wednesday as the July 9 deadline approached.
Asia Times
5 hours ago
- Asia Times
Trump's tech sanctions to empower China, betray America
President Donald Trump is stepping up US efforts to cut off China's access to advanced technology, marking a continuation of restrictions first launched in his first term and continued under the Biden administration. The primary victims of these technology bans are American companies that were once China's preferred suppliers. The main beneficiaries are Chinese companies, some of which have been handed massive market opportunities stripped of their most formidable foreign competitors. This has most recently been illustrated by new restrictions on exports to China of US semiconductor design technology, Nvidia's H20 AI processor and jet engines for passenger aircraft. Last week, the Bureau of Industry and Security of the US Department of Commerce ordered electronic design automation (EDA) software providers serving the semiconductor industry to halt shipments to Chinese customers. On the news, the share prices of the world's top two EDA companies, Synopsys and Cadence Design, dropped by more than 13% and then recovered to finish down 6% and 8%, respectively, in the week to Friday, May 30. The third major EDA supplier, the US company formerly known as Mentor Graphics now owned by Germany's Siemens, is no longer publicly traded. According to market research organization TrendForce, Synopsys, Cadence Design, and Siemens have 31%, 30%, and 11% of the global EDA market, respectively. China accounted for 16% and 12% of Synopsys' and Cadence's EDA sales in 2024. Siemens does not provide a geographical breakdown of its EDA sales. As EETimes reports, EDA is seen as 'the true choke point' in China's semiconductor industry, particularly with regard to artificial intelligence (AI) processors and other advanced integrated circuits (ICs). In addition, according to Cadence, the BIS wrote that the sale of EDA software to Chinese companies constitutes 'an unacceptable risk of use in or diversion to a 'military end use' in China or for a Chinese 'military end user.'' In theory, exports of EDA tools to Chinese customers would be allowed under BIS license; in practice, licenses are extremely unlikely to be forthcoming. For this reason, Synopsys has reportedly shut down its EDA sales and service operations and told its local staff to stop taking new orders in China. EDA export restrictions were first considered during the previous Trump administration, but until now have reportedly been rejected because they were considered too aggressive. Now they are part of Trump's strategy to ramp up pressure on China in pursuit of a broad trade deal. Last year, Synopsis, Cadence Design and Siemens held approximately 80% of the Chinese EDA market, but that figure is already in decline. Synopsys' sales in China dropped 28% year-on-year in the first half of its fiscal 2025 (the six months to April), with the share of its total sales made there falling from a peak of 17% in Q3 of fiscal 2024 to 10% in Q2 of 2025. Cadence Design reported a 9% year-on-year increase in China sales in Q1 of its fiscal 2025 (ended March) but a 24% decline from Q4 of 2024, with the share of its total sales made in China dropping from 13% to 11%. And now, if Trump doesn't back down, it – and Synopsys's 10% – could fall to zero. Meanwhile, the sales of Chinese EDA companies are growing. There are more than ten EDA software and system developers in China, including Empyrean Technology, Primarius Technologies and Xpeedic. A combination of estimates from market research and industry associations, independent analysts and the companies themselves puts their market shares at 10%-12%, 5%-6% and 3%-4%, respectively. In March 2025, Empyrean announced plans to take control of Xpeedic. In Q1 of 2025, Empyrean and Primarius' sales were up 10% and 12% year-on-year, respectively. While the share prices of US EDA companies fell, those of their Chinese competitors rose. The share prices of Empyrean Technology and Primarius Technologies jumped 16% and 21%, respectively, last Wednesday and Thursday. Primarius, which has a significantly smaller market capitalization, continued to rise, finishing up 35% in the week through Tuesday, June 3. Chinese EDA companies receive support from central and local governments, academia and private sector customers, including tech giants Huawei and SMIC. China's National Center of Technology Innovation for EDA was established in Nanjing in June 2023, with contributions from Jiangsu Province, the Ministry of Education, Peking and Xidian universities, and an investment company from Shenzhen. Member companies include Empyrean, Primarius and Shenzhen Giga Design Automation. It could take some time, but China appears to be relatively well-positioned to take advantage of and overcome the latest US government sanctions. The Chinese EDA industry is already undergoing consolidation, and the forced withdrawal of US competitors provides a new incentive to push their technological limits and build economies of scale. Notably, Empyrean already works with Japan's Renesas while Empyrean, Primarius and Xpeedic are EDA partners of Samsung Foundry. In April, Nvidia revealed in an SEC filing that sales of its H20 AI processors to China would effectively be banned, and that it was therefore planning to write down $5.5 billion worth of inventory, purchase commitments and related reserves in Q1 of its fiscal 2026. (Shipments of equivalent processors from AMD were also restricted.) In the event, Nvidia's write-down was $4.5 billion but the ban also reduced sales by $2.5 billion and $8 billion more is expected to be lost in Q2. China accounted for about 10% of Nvidia's sales in Q1, down from 13% the previous fiscal year. Now, the figure seems likely to drop to low single digits. Nvidia's share of the Chinese market for AI processors, which has already dropped from 95% to 50% (40% by some estimates), is also expected to keep falling, likely to insignificance if US policy doesn't change. At the Computex 2025 event held in Taipei, Taiwan, from May 20 to 23, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called export controls a 'failure.' Elaborating on the assessment, he said that, 'The US has based its policy on the assumption that China cannot make AI chips. That assumption was always questionable, and now it's clearly wrong.' A Nvidia spokesperson added, 'With the ban on H20, our competitors in China are now largely shielded from US competition and free to leverage that entire $50 billion market to build a robust AI ecosystem.' In an interview with the Stratechery tech newsletter published on May 19, Huang said, 'China's doing fantastic. 50% of the world's AI researchers are Chinese and you're not going to hold them back, you're not going to stop them from advancing AI. Let's face it, DeepSeek is deeply excellent work. To give them anything short of that is a lack of confidence, so deep that I just can't even tolerate it.' Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and other Chinese buyers of AI processors are already using domestic alternatives to chips from Nvidia and AMD, starting with, but not limited to, Huawei's Ascend series. On May 28, The New York Times reported that the US government has restricted sales of jet engine technology to China, which will likely be a major headache for the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC). COMAC's C919 passenger jets are currently equipped with LEAP turbofan engines manufactured by CFM International, a joint venture between GE Aviation of the US and Safran Aircraft Engines of France. However, the Aero Engine Corporation of China appears to be making progress toward developing a domestic alternative, known as the CJ-1000. In March, as reported by the South China Morning Post, Shi Jianzhong, honorary president of the Shanghai Society of Aeronautics and former deputy general manager of COMAC, told a Chinese aviation forum that 'The CJ-1000 engine is in trial runs and it fared better than my most optimistic expectations.' Verification flights of the C919 aircraft equipped with the CJ-1000 jet engine are expected to begin 'soon.' There is also the possibility of renewed collaboration with Russia, which has a history of building jet engines for commercial aircraft dating back to the Soviet Union era. But that appears to be on hold as Russia concentrates on developing key components for its own short- and medium-range passenger jets. Two years ago, Yury Slyusar, CEO of Russia's United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), warned COMAC that 'There may come a point when Western nations halt the supply of crucial components, assemblies, and products, potentially leading to a halt in aircraft production. Therefore, we urge them to reconsider the 'insides' of the aircraft as part of joint projects and reduce dependency on Western companies.' Ever since Trump first slapped sanctions on Huawei in 2018, the US government has incentivized Chinese innovation while undermining once-dominant American market shares, creating what it aims to prevent – the emergence of Chinese technology industries that are both self-sufficient and globally competitive. The attempt to suppress Huawei – which today is not only a world leader in telecom equipment but also has a growing presence in AI, IC design, autonomous driving and even enterprise software – has, by any measure, failed. And that will likely be the case for many Chinese companies targeted by the latest round of US sanctions. At the Reagan National Economic Forum held in California at the end of May, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said, 'I would engage with China. I just got back from China last week. They're not scared, folks. This notion they're going to come bow to America, I wouldn't count on that. When they have a problem, they put 100,000 engineers on it. They've been preparing for this for years.' Follow this writer on X: @ScottFo83517667
Asia Times
7 hours ago
- Asia Times
The hard road to a clean and profitable Danantara
The recent inauguration of Danantara, Indonesia's new sovereign wealth fund, marks a remarkable development in the Southeast Asian nation's economic strategy. Established through amendment to the State-Owned Enterprises Law (Law No. 1), Danantara's creation has sparked significant discussion, often drawing comparisons with regional giants such as Singapore's Temasek Holdings and Malaysia's Khazanah Nasional. Yet, a critical aspect often overlooked is the profound disparity in legal frameworks that govern these entities and the implications for Indonesian state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Indonesia's legal framework for managing SOEs has traditionally been rigid and risk-averse. Under the former SOE Law, boards of directors were perpetually at dual risks: navigating business losses and evading potential corruption charges. This ambiguity often stemmed from the blurred legal lines that failed to distinguish between genuine business losses and misappropriation of public funds. Consequently, SOEs were involved in a stringent compliance framework that stifled innovation, promoted bureaucratic conservatism and hindered the development of a dynamic and competitive economy. The reformed SOE Law attempts to mitigate these challenges by reclassifying business losses as corporate losses instead of losses to state finances, significantly reducing the criminal liability under Indonesia's principal anti-corruption law (UU Tipikor). However, a more detailed review of UU Tipikor—particularly Articles 2 and 3—suggests that corruption may still be conducted based on two criteria: losses to state finances ( keuangan negara ) and harm to the state economy ( perekonomian negara ). While the new SOE Law narrows the risk associated with state financial losses, the interpretation of 'harm to the state economy' remains nebulous and broad. Unlike financial losses, which are measurable and direct, harm to the state economy is a much broader notion. It could be interpreted to include impacts on the country's investment climate, economic system stability or other material adverse effects. Governance and oversight weaknesses pose the most immediate risk to Danantara's mission. Unlike well-established funds such as Temasek or Khazanah, which are overseen by independent boards with rigorous checks, Danantara is ultimately controlled by the Executive Office of the President. Its enabling law (Law No. 1 of 2025) places the fund under the president, delegated via the SOE Ministry. This centralized control has raised alarms that Danantara could become a vehicle for political patronage rather than objective investment management. Worryingly, Indonesia's national audit body (BPK) currently lacks a clear mandate to scrutinize SOEs' books at this stage, removing a critical layer of independent oversight. The exclusion of the state audit agency from the fund's oversight framework means billions in public assets could be managed with limited external accountability, a structural flaw that undermines transparency and investor trust. If the foundation of this institution is built on insufficient checks, the door opens to mismanagement or worse. Closely intertwined is the risk of political interference. By design, Danantara's management answers to political authorities, which heightens the possibility of government directives influencing investment decisions. Past governance issues in Indonesian SOEs often stemmed from political interest superseding commercial logic, and Danantara's current setup may not fully solve this. Analysts note that the fund remains 'inherently tied to the government and political influence' under the present structure. That has manifested in market fears, despite presidential assurances of open audits ; there are persistent concerns that the fund could be misused for short-term political goals or the benefit of cronies . Such interference would erode not only Danantara's profitability but also its reputation. The first week of trading after Danantara's launch vividly illustrated this: mere speculation about heavy state control was enough to send Indonesian stocks tumbling and investors fleeing. Legal and structural uncertainties add another layer of risk. Danantara represents a radical reorganization of state assets, and not all roles and responsibilities have been clearly delineated. Tension could emerge between Danantara and existing institutions like the Finance Ministry or the SOE Ministry over who ultimately calls the shots on strategy and budgets. Some experts warn of a potential conflict of authority that could create bureaucratic bottlenecks and confusion in managing the fund's portfolio. Unless comprehensive legal alignment is achieved, Indonesia risks undermining the very goal of creating a more dynamic, innovative and business-friendly SOE sector. To secure Danantara's success and allay early concerns, Indonesia should swiftly implement a set of governance and integrity reforms. First, establish independent oversight by creating a truly independent supervisory board or council for Danantara composed of reputable professionals (including international experts and domestic technocrats) who are not beholden to the current administration. This body should have the authority to oversee the fund's strategy and audit its finances as well as provide checks and balances. Second, strengthen corporate governance and integrity to ensure Danantara and its portfolio SOEs adopt the highest standards of corporate governance, clear performance benchmarks, risk management frameworks, and zero-tolerance policies on corruption. The executives running the fund and the companies under it must be selected based on merit and insulated from political pressure. A code of conduct should bar political office-holders from interfering in day-to-day decisions. Over time, consider partial listings or independent trustees for some holdings to introduce market discipline. These steps will professionalize operations and guard against the fund becoming a 'vehicle for political patronage.' Finally, legally guarantee non-interference by enshrining in law the operational autonomy of Danantara's management. The government should explicitly limit its role to a shareholders-like function, setting broad objectives and risk appetite but not micromanaging investments. Fixed terms for the fund's CEO and directors, removable only for cause, could help shield them from political turnover. Clarify the legal framework to resolve any overlaps; for instance, formalize how the Finance Ministry supports the funds or handles any needed capital injections, to remove uncertainty. Clear, stable regulations will provide the legal certainty global investors need to partner with Danantara. We hope that the government will uphold public trust by strengthening oversight, depoliticizing management, tightening compliance and committing to transparency. If governed with integrity, Danantara can indeed be a powerful engine of growth and a legacy-building institution for Indonesia. But if mismanaged, it risks becoming a US$900 billion liability. We should remain optimistic yet vigilant, ensuring that the government actively mitigates all risks and takes necessary precautions. Ahmad Novindri Aji Sukma is a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge, specializing in criminology. Arfian Setiaji is a senior legal officer and a University of Washington alumnus specializing in corporate and tech law.
