Asian tech roundup: Australia bans TikTok

Plus: Alibaba gets into AI, and India refuses to regulate

Welcome to Computing's fortnightly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at Australia joining the growing global move against TikTok in the public sector; Alibaba's generative AI tool; and India's commitment to its 2018 regulations.

China

• Tech giant Alibaba has announced plans for its own generative AI chatbot called Tongyi Qianwen. It first plans to add the bot, able to work in both English and Chinese, to its workplace messaging app DingTalk and smart speaker Tmall Genie. The company also plans to let customers use Tongyi Qianwen to build custom large language models tailored to their specific needs - letting them build their own AI apps. Source 1 Source 2
• Tesla has signed a deal to open a battery factory near Shanghai, producing large-scale (about the size of a shipping container) rechargeable lithium-ion batteries known as Megapacks. Work will begin later this year. Source 1 Source 2

India

• India has decided not to draw up new AI regulations. Instead it will stick with the 2018 National Strategy for AI, which the government feels addresses concerns about the technology. Source
• IBM spin-off Kyndryl is letting go of employees in marketing, administration, human resources and other "non-core" verticals. The redundancies are focused on India, where the company employs about 30,000 people. Source
• Attendees of the World Startup Convention (WSC), a festival for start-up companies to raise funds and meet investors in Delhi last month, have filed a police report against the event for misleading practices. Participants, sponsors and influencers who promoted the event have all shared negative experiences, and complainants have called it a $12 million scam. Source

Other Asia

• Australia has banned TikTok from federal government devices over security concerns, following similar moves in the USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand, France, Belgium and the European Commission. Source
• Latitude Financial, an Australian lender, has said it won't pay a ransom to a hacker that stole personal data last month. Nearly 8 million peoples' data was affected. Source
• Twitter has blocked the Pakistan government's official Twitter account for users in India, following local government policy. This may be related to the manhunt for Amritpal Singh. Source
• Philippines-based Limitless Lab has launched an AI platform called GreatGov GPT, designed to help government officials create policy drafts and documents. Source
• South Korea's Fair Trade Commission has fined Google ₩42.1 billion (£25.6 million, $31.8 million) for anticompetitive practices. The FTC says Google used the popularity of its Play Store to squeeze out local rival OneStore, telling developers they could not use both. Source
• Prosecutors in South Korea have frozen nearly ₩7.1 billion ($5.3 million) in assets belonging to Do Kwon, co-founder of failed crypto firm Terraform Labs, as well as the main developer of the TerraUSD and Luna tokens. Those tokens' failures last year were the first sign of the inflated crypto market starting to topple. Source
• The government of Vietnam plans to investigate TikTok's operations in the country next month, to make sure it is complying with regulations. A spokesperson said the app has allowed "toxic, offensive, false and superstitious" content to be posted. Source