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Business Times
9 hours ago
- Business Times
Alibaba, Tencent freeze AI tools during high-stakes China exam
[BEIJING] China's most popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots such as Alibaba's Qwen have temporarily disabled functions including picture recognition, to prevent students from cheating during the country's annual 'gaokao' college entrance examinations. Apps including Tencent Holdings' Yuanbao and Moonshot's Kimi suspended photo-recognition services during the hours when the multi-day exams take place across the country. Asked to explain, the chatbots responded: 'To ensure the fairness of the college entrance examinations, this function cannot be used during the test period.' China's infamously rigorous 'gaokao' is a rite of passage for teenagers across the nation, thought to shape the futures of millions of aspiring graduates. Students – and their parents – pull out the stops for any edge they can get, from extensive private tuition to, on occasion, attempts to cheat. To minimise disruption, examiners outlaw the use of devices during the hours-long tests. Alibaba Group Holding's Qwen and ByteDance's Doubao still offered photo recognition as at Monday (Jun 9). But when asked to answer questions about a photo of a test paper, Qwen responded that the service was temporarily frozen during exam hours from Jun 7 to 10. Doubao said the picture uploaded was 'not in compliance with rules'. China lacks a widely adopted university application process such as in the US, where students prove their qualifications through years of academic records, along with standardised tests and personal essays. For Chinese high-school seniors, the gaokao, held in June each year, is often the only way they can impress admissions officials. About 13.4 million students are taking part in this year's exams. The test is considered the most significant in the nation, especially for those from smaller cities and lower-income families that lack resources. A misstep may require another year in high school, or completely alter a teenager's future. The exam is also one of the most strictly controlled in China, to prevent cheating and ensure fairness. But fast-developing AI has posed new challenges for schools and regulators. The education ministry last month released a set of regulations stating that, while schools should start cultivating AI talent at a young age, students should not use AI-generated content as answers in homework and tests. BLOOMBERG
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tencent Posts Solid Results as AI Investments Start to Pay Off
Tencent Holdings' revenue growth accelerated in the first quarter as its core gaming business remained strong and ramped-up spending on artificial intelligence began to pay off. The company, China's largest by market capitalization, said Wednesday that AI capabilities have started to contribute tangibly to its advertisement and game businesses. The Unraveling of the King of Davos Can UnitedHealth's New Boss Succeed Where Other 'Boomerang' CEOs Failed? ESPN's New Streaming Service Will Cost $29.99 a Month Microsoft Slashing Thousands of Workers, Including Management Jobs 'MAGA Accounts': What to Know About the $1,000 Child Savings Pitch in the Tax Bill Tencent's first-quarter revenue climbed 13% from a year earlier to 180.02 billion yuan, equivalent to $24.98 billion, topping analysts' expectations. That marked a pickup from the single-digit growth seen in previous quarters. The Chinese technology giant has been investing more and more in AI to compete against rivals and enhance its offerings in gaming, social media, digital payments and cloud services. Tencent's capital expenditure surged more than 300% in the fourth quarter as it snapped up graphics processing units–and it plans to accelerate spending further. Company president Martin Lau said after the 2024 results that its capex will likely account for a low-teen percentage of revenue this year. First-quarter capital spending almost doubled from a year ago to 27.48 billion yuan but was down from the 36.58 billion yuan recorded in the final quarter of 2024. Analysts say that Tencent's increased spending and use of multiple AI models, both third-party and its own, will drive monetization and could lead to the creation of a powerful AI ecosystem. Its net profit rose 14% to 47.82 billion yuan during the quarter, missing the 52.12 billion yuan estimated by analysts in a FactSet poll. Tencent's bread-and-butter gaming business maintained strong momentum, with the domestic division delivering a 24% sales gain, boosted by a low base and legacy titles 'Honor of Kings' and 'Peacekeeper Elite,' as well as last year's breakout hit 'Dungeon & Fighter Mobile.' Revenue from the international gaming business increased 23%. AI-powered ad targeting and creation helped lift Tencent's marketing services revenue by 20% in the first three months of the year despite challenging macro conditions. Citi analysts viewed the results as 'a stronger-than-expected print,' supported by continued levers of sustainable growth of high-margin revenue streams and signs of AI-enhancing benefit. Continuous AI advertising tech upgrades could make Tencent's ad revenue growth more durable than that of global peers, Morgan Stanley analysts said in a recent note. That is largely due to the valuable user data it can use from the mini-programs and payment services embedded in its popular do-everything app, Weixin. Weixin and its overseas version, WeChat, had a combined 1.40 billion monthly active users as of the end of March. Tencent said operating leverage from existing high-quality revenue streams can help absorb the costs of investing more in new opportunities, such as its Yuanbao chatbot application and AI features on Weixin. The company's use of AI and solid earnings performances have helped make it one of the hottest Chinese tech stocks of 2025. Data from Wind showed that Tencent was one of the top three most purchased stocks via the Hong Kong Southbound Connect program over the past three months. Concerns about U.S. tariffs have taken some of the wind out of the broader rally in Chinese tech shares, tempering enthusiasm about the emergence of homegrown AI startups like DeepSeek. Tencent's business is relatively resilient to tariff risks as it makes most of its revenue in China. The stock is still up 25% so far this year, but tightened U.S. controls on advanced chips could disrupt AI ramp-up efforts. The U.S. government said last month that Nvidia will now need a license to export its H20 processors to China and several other countries. Chinese AI players, including Tencent, use the chips to power their AI efforts. Still, analysts think Tencent's strong H20 chip inventory will likely leave it less exposed to the latest U.S. restrictions. There is also a growing number of domestic substitutes for the chip. Coming earnings from Tencent's peers Alibaba and Baidu will offer a broader picture of how the Chinese tech industry is holding up amid the pressure. Write to Sherry Qin at Apple to Support Brain-Implant Control of Its Devices Trump's China Deal Makes Sense. How He Got Here Doesn't. United Adds Caviar Service and Luxe Jammies in Race for Superpremium Travelers Mild April Inflation Captures Early Stages of Tariff Effects Trump's Drug-Price Crackdown, Like His Trade War, Could Be More Bark Than Bite Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tencent ramps up global AI efforts with roll-out of advanced Hunyuan 3D-generation system
Tencent Holdings released an updated 3D-generation system based on its artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model, Hunyuan, on open-source platforms, a move that is expected to help video game developers produce three-dimensional content more efficiently, from days to a few minutes. The open-source Hunyuan3D 2.0, built on Tencent's own large language model (LLM), is used to generate high-resolution, textured 3D assets, according to a statement by the Shenzhen-based company on Tuesday. The advanced system includes two foundation components: a shape-generation model called Hunyuan3D-DiT and a texture-synthesis model, Hunyuan3D-Paint. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. Tencent also rolled out Hunyuan3D Studio, which it touted as "the industry's first one-stop platform" that simplifies the recreation process for 3D content using AI. It is available to both professional and amateur users for manipulating or even animating their creations. The updated 3D-generation model and AI production platform are expected to "effectively lower the barriers to entry for enthusiasts, developers and creators", Guo Chunchao, head of Tencent's Hunyuan3D team, said in the statement. Apart from improving efficiency, these products would "help realise the value of 3D AI models across various industries", Guo added. Tencent Holdings' advanced three-dimensional content-generation system includes the Hunyuan3D-DiT model, the Hunyuan3D-Paint model and the Hunyuan3D-Studio platform. Photo: Tencent alt=Tencent Holdings' advanced three-dimensional content-generation system includes the Hunyuan3D-DiT model, the Hunyuan3D-Paint model and the Hunyuan3D-Studio platform. Photo: Tencent> Tencent's latest AI-powered system reflects the internet giant's efforts to advance 3D-content production, such as creating characters and objects in video games, generating avatars for social media and building prototypes in manufacturing. Tencent said the system has already been internally used for video game production and other businesses. This has helped shorten development of 3D assets in video games from five to 10 days to only minutes, the company said. LLM refers to the technology underpinning generative AI services such as ChatGPT. Open source gives public access to a software program's source code, allowing third-party developers to modify or share its design, fix broken links or scale up its capabilities. Tencent's open-source Hunyuan3D 2.0 launch was widely featured on GitHub - an online platform that allows developers to create, store, manage and share their code - and Hugging Face, an AI community platform where users collaborate on models, data sets and applications. The launch comes amid a heated race among Chinese tech firms to expand the adoption of their AI models and help create useful applications for various industries. TikTok owner ByteDance, for example, on Wednesday unveiled its closed-source Doubao 1.5 Pro model that focuses on resource efficiency. That followed new LLM initiatives by AI start-ups Deepseek and Moonshot AI. Meanwhile, Tencent has been enhancing the capabilities of its Hunyuan model. It launched an open-source text-to-video generation tool to enterprise and individual users in December, following its enhancement of text-to-image generation on Hunyuan in May. On Wednesday, Tencent forged a deal with CP Axtra - the Thailand-based retail giant with over 2,600 stores in more than 10 countries - to use digital and AI technologies to revolutionise its operations, according to a joint announcement by the two companies. Tencent's cloud computing unit will help CP Axtra manage its inventory using Big Data, while enhancing its marketing performance via AI. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
