# AI
Latest news and articles about AI
Total: 207 articles found
China’s ¥100bn Lunar New Year ‘Red‑Packet’ War Exposes an Emerging AI Compute Crunch
China’s Spring Festival promotional campaigns—collectively worth nearly ¥100 billion—have driven extreme traffic spikes that briefly knocked services offline and highlighted a growing mismatch between consumer‑facing AI adoption and available compute capacity. Firms are ramping cloud and data‑centre investments even as advances in models and token windows multiply inference demand, creating cross‑cutting pressures on energy systems and commodity supply chains.
China’s Tech Giants Turn Spring Festival into an AI‑Fuelled Red‑Envelope Arms Race
China’s leading tech platforms have launched an extraordinary Lunar New Year promotional battle that blends cash red packets, steep discounts and AI features, with announced spends approaching 10 billion yuan (~$1.4bn). The campaigns aim not only to drive immediate consumption but to train users on AI interactions and lock them into each firm’s ecosystem.
Apple’s Siri Upgrade Stumbles in Testing, Forcing Staggered AI Rollout and New Timetable
Apple has delayed and will stagger the rollout of major Siri AI features after internal tests exposed stability, accuracy and routing problems. Privacy constraints and underperforming in‑house models are slowing development, while some search and image features may still ship on schedule.
Apple’s Next‑Gen Siri Stumbles Again: AI Features May Slip from March into Summer or Fall
Apple’s ambitious upgrade to Siri, built on its own model platform and integrating Google’s Gemini, has hit new testing problems that may delay key features previously slated for iOS 26.4 in March. Core capabilities such as expanded personal‑data search and advanced app voice controls are the most likely to slip into later iOS releases, underscoring the engineering and strategic challenges of deploying generative AI within Apple’s privacy framework.
Apple’s Siri Overhaul Falters in Testing, Key Voice Features Pushed to Later iOS Releases
Apple has delayed parts of its major Siri upgrade after testing exposed problems with query handling, response times and conversational flow. The company plans a phased rollout, pushing some features to iOS 26.5 or iOS 27 while focusing on stability for the initial release.
Joseph Tsai Says Jack Ma Once 'Fired' Him — and Signals Alibaba's New, Narrower Focus on AI and Cloud
At a Stanford Business School interview, Alibaba chairman Joseph Tsai revealed Jack Ma once removed him from an operations role early in Alibaba's history and described the company's renewed strategic focus: concentrate on e-commerce, expand AI and cloud (with an eye toward GPU demand), and deprioritize non-core assets. He framed these choices as pragmatic responses to market realities and the need for clear priorities.
Alibaba Turns Free Milk Tea into a Showcase for Full‑Stack AI Power
Alibaba used a RMB3 billion promotion through its Qianwen app to orchestrate 10 million milk‑tea orders in nine hours, demonstrating the company’s full‑stack AI capability. By combining in‑house models, cloud infrastructure and proprietary silicon with deep integration across its consumer ecosystem, Alibaba showcased a path from generative models to agentic, real‑world execution.
2026: The Year AI Glasses Move from Lab to Main Street — China’s Devices Take Centre Stage at the Winter Olympics
Chinese firms showcased AI‑enabled AR smart glasses at the 2026 Milan–Cortina Winter Olympics as analysts declare 2026 a pivotal year for on‑device AI. Advances in model compression and edge compute, plus strengthening supply chains, make large‑model inference on consumer wearables commercially plausible, though adoption will depend on cost, battery life, form factor and regulatory scrutiny.
One Nomination, Many Aftershocks: How a Fed Pick and AI Fears Unleashed a Market Reset
Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Fed chair shocked markets by shifting expectations on monetary policy, triggering a dollar rally and deep declines in gold, silver and bitcoin. But the sell-off also reflected a broader reassessment of tech valuations as agentic AI threatens traditional SaaS economics and forces enormous corporate AI capital spending.
Google Goes All‑In on AI: $180bn Capex Bet Turns Search Giant into Infrastructure Warfighter
Alphabet reported strong 2025 results, with revenue growth and rising search and cloud momentum, yet surprised markets by guiding roughly $180 billion of capital expenditure for 2026 to accelerate AI infrastructure. The plan deepens Google’s hardware‑and‑energy play, raises barriers to competition and creates short‑term pressures on earnings through higher depreciation and cash burn.
Unauthorized AI Lunar‑New‑Year Greeting Videos Surge in China, Raising Legal and Trust Questions
AI‑generated Lunar New Year greeting videos are proliferating on Chinese social media without the consent of depicted individuals. While major platforms are adding watermarks, contractual bans and automated detection, many open‑source tools lack safeguards, creating civil, reputational and criminal risks and exposing broader governance gaps around synthetic media.
Memory-Led Boom: Semiconductor Revenues Poised to Cross $1 Trillion on AI and Storage Strength
Omdia forecasts that the semiconductor industry will surpass $1 trillion in revenue by 2026, propelled primarily by a storage-led recovery and stronger AI deployment. The rebound is heavily concentrated in memory chips, while non-memory segments show only modest growth, raising questions about cycle concentration and supply-chain risk.