This week TikTok, artificial intelligence and renewable energy become top 3 stories

1-TikTok to label AI-generated content

TikTok, the short video platform, to label AI-generated content from other sources as part of a move to increase clarity and understanding around AI. How does the system work? TikTok will embed a new tool developed in collaboration with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), also known as Content Credentials technology. The company adds a “digital nutrition label” to content on the video-hosting app, informing users what is AI-generated, how it was created, and when./By the way, I have a story here about Turkish startups )

“AI-generated content is an incredible creative outlet, but transparency for viewers is critical,” said Adam Presser, Head of Operations and Trust and Safety at TikTok.  “By partnering with peers to label content across platforms, we’re making it easy for creators to responsibly explore AI-generated content while continuing to deter the harmful or misleading artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) that is prohibited on TikTok,” added Presser.

2-Is it possible to use US AI technology in China?

I saw this story at Reuters it handles how China is dependent on US artificial intelligence technology. OpenAI’s main AI services, including ChatGPT and the DALL-E image generator,  have not been officially introduced in China, penned by Josh Ye.

But a huge number of companies have accessed OpenAI’s services using proxy tools like virtual private networks (VPN) to hide their network addresses, according to the story.

As a result, many Chinese companies have been able to build software and applications using OpenAI’s models. Let me add that Chinese companies also frequently compare their own AI models with OpenAI.

In March, the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, a high-level research lab, was quoted by Chinese state media as stating that the majority of homegrown Chinese AI models were in fact built using Meta’s  Llama models and that this posed a key challenge to China’s AI development, the story added. “In November 2023, 01.AI, one of the most high-profile AI unicorns in China founded by Google’s former executive Lee Kai-fu, faced a major backlash after some AI engineers found that its AI model Yi-34B was built on Meta’s Llama system.” Chinese authorities have been emphasizing the need for the country to develop its own “controllable” AI technology, the story claimed.

3- Renewables generated 30% of global electricity in 2023

In 2023, growth in solar and wind pushed the world past 30% renewable electricity for the first time, according to Ember,  a global energy think tank. The NGO recently released its fifth annual Global Electricity Review that provides overview of changes in global electricity generation in 2023. “Renewables have expanded from 19% of global electricity in 2000, driven by an increase in solar and wind from 0.2% in 2000 to a record 13.4% in 2023. China was the main contributor in 2023, accounting for 51% of the additional global solar generation and 60% of new global wind generation,” said the report.  Combined with nuclear, the world generated almost 40% of its electricity from low-carbon sources in 2023. As a result, the CO2 intensity of global power generation reached a new record low, 12% lower than its peak in 2007, Ember’s study added. (Here’s a story of mine about the share of renewable energy in the Turkish electricity generation)