Tag: Search engines

Big American Tech Profits From Chinese Ad Spending Spree

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The trade relationship between China and the United States has plenty of friction. But at least one area is booming: Chinese start-ups looking to establish a presence in the West are spending billions of dollars for advertisements on services owned by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology companies. Temu, the international arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, is flooding Google with ads for absurdly inexpensive goods. With an initial public offering looming, the fast-fashion merchant Shein is inundating Instagram with ads for clothes and accessories at rock-bottom prices. Developers…

What Happens When You Ask a Chinese Chatbot About Taiwan?

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“How does the United States affect the situation in Taiwan?” Ernie ducked the question about China’s “zero Covid” restrictions, offering a lengthy description of the policy instead. When asked to recount the events of June 4, 1989, the chatbot rebooted itself. A message popped up on the reloaded interface: How about we try a different topic? The Chinese chatbot said Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, did not invade Ukraine, but “conducted a military conflict.” The strange phrasing was broadly in line with China’s official stance, which has refused to condemn…

China’s Search Engines Have More Than 66,000 Rules Controlling Content, Report Says

Chin@Strategy

China’s internet censorship is well known, but a report has quantified the extent of it, uncovering more than 66,000 rules controlling the content that is available to people using search engines. The most diligent censor, by at least one measure, is Microsoft’s search engine Bing, the only foreign search engine operating in the country, according to the report, which was released on Wednesday by the Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity research group at the University of Toronto. The findings suggested that China’s censorship apparatus had become not only more pervasive, but…

Chinese ChatGPT rival from search engine firm Baidu fails to impress

Chin@Strategy

The Chinese search engine company Baidu’s shares have fallen by as much as 10% after the company unveiled its ChatGPT-like AI software, with investors unimpressed by the bot’s display of linguistic and maths skills. The artificial intelligence-powered ChatGPT, created by the San Francisco company OpenAI, has caused a sensation for its ability to write essays, poems and programming code on demand within seconds, prompting widespread fears over cheating or of professions becoming obsolete. Chinese tech companies have joined the global rush to develop rival software, with Alibaba and JD.com also…

Hong Kong pressures Google to remove protest anthem from searches

Chin@Strategy

Google has refused to change its search results to display China’s national anthem, rather than a protest song, when users search for Hong Kong’s national anthem, the city’s security chief has said, expressing “great regret” at the decision. Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The row comes after the police said they would investigate the playing of Glory to Hong Kong, the unofficial anthem of the 2019 pro-democracy protests, at the men’s final of a sevens rugby tournament in South Korea in…