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Tesla eyes favourable opening in India
Tesla is eyeing a favourable entry in India as the company received a warm welcome for its proposal to invest in the country. Meanwhile, its largest rival, China’s BYD, has faced increased scrutiny. This could be an opening for Tesla to negotiate terms for an entry into the world’s third-largest auto market without the competitive threat from BYD that it faces in other emerging markets.
Tesla has been looking to expand its market globally, aiming to sell 20 million cars by 2030, but faces hurdles to expanding its Shanghai factory. Meanwhile, India has told the EV maker it will allow Chinese suppliers into the country if they forge partnerships with local firms, just like Apple did. India is also hesitant on BYD’s $1 billion investment plan as officials are worried about the national security implications of Chinese-made vehicles and the data they could collect.
Musk plans chat with Tim Cook about Apple tax
Elon Musk said he will speak to Apple CEO, Tim Cook, to see if the iPhone maker will adjust its fee from 30% of all in-app purchases to just 30% of what X keeps to maximise the share of creators. Musk said he wants to change this so Apple charges a commission only on the portion of the payout kept by X, thereby reducing pressure on content creators on the platform.
The move from Musk comes as he tries to entice creators, in a bid to increase engagement on the platform. Musk also said that X will also only take 10% from creators once the payout exceeds $100,000, while not taking any cuts for the first 12 months.
Meta’s open-source AI music tool
Meta unveiled its latest open-source “AudioCraft” AI tool with the capability to allow professionals and casual users alike to produce high-quality audio such as music and sound effects using text prompts.
The AudioCraft AI tools consist of three models: MusicGen, AudioGen and EnCodec. While MusicGen is trained using Meta’s own music library and generates music from text prompts, AudioGen is trained in public sound effects and generates audio from text prompts. Meta is also sharing all of the AudioCraft model’s weights and code and open-sourcing them, allowing researchers and practitioners to build on its ecosystem and train their own models with their own datasets.
