China sets out new rules for generative AI | The FTC is investigating whether ChatGPT harms consumers | Philippine raid on Chinese firm spotlights human trafficking issues in online gaming industry
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China issued the world’s earliest and most detailed regulations on generative artificial intelligence models on Thursday by highlighting healthy content and “core socialist values”, as Beijing seeks to control the roll-out of ChatGPT-style services. According to provisional regulations published jointly by seven Chinese regulators led by the Cyberspace Administration of China, which will come into effect on August 15, all generative AI content services, including text, pictures, audio and video, provided to the Chinese public will be subject to the new rules. South China Morning Post
The Federal Trade Commission has opened an expansive investigation into OpenAI, probing whether the maker of the popular ChatGPT bot has run afoul of consumer protection laws by putting personal reputations and data at risk. The agency this week sent the San Francisco company a 20-page demand for records about how it addresses risks related to its AI models. The Washington Post
A Chinese-run gambling company is under investigation following claims by employees of delayed salaries, prostitution activities and love scams, in a case that has highlighted the complex issues surrounding the Philippine online gaming industry. A 2,000-strong team from the Philippine police force raided Xinchuang Network Technology, Inc – a vast Chinese-run online gaming complex in southern Manila – on June 26, seizing computer data and safety box vaults allegedly in connection with human trafficking and “love scam” activities inside the complex. South China Morning Post
Australia
Govt to receive strategy for ‘authoritarian tech vendors’
InnovationAus
Joseph Brookes
The Department of Home Affairs is preparing advice for the Albanese government on the risks of “authoritarian vendors” after departments spent the last six months ripping out security equipment manufactured in China and removing the TikTiok app from officials’ phones. The department has already delivered a report to Home Affairs minister Clare O’Neil with a range of options to tackle social media companies with questionable data collection practices and links to authoritarian regimes. The new advice will also cover hardware and propose a more proactive approach to mitigating risks.
Jo was scammed out of $4,000. She wants Australia’s banks to be responsible for paying it back
The Guardian
Cait Kelly
Last month, in a world first, the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator mandated that banks will have to reimburse victims of push payment fraud, where scammers impersonate financial institutions or the police, within five days – beginning next year. Now there are calls for Australia to follow suit. But Australian banks have resisted the calls, claiming the reimbursement model has seen scam numbers increase at a four-fold rate compared with Australia.
China
China sets out new rules for generative AI, with Beijing emphasising healthy content and adherence to ‘socialist values’
South China Morning Post
Che Pan
China issued the world’s earliest and most detailed regulations on generative artificial intelligence models on Thursday by highlighting healthy content and “core socialist values”, as Beijing seeks to control the roll-out of ChatGPT-style services. According to provisional regulations published jointly by seven Chinese regulators led by the Cyberspace Administration of China, which will come into effect on August 15, all generative AI content services, including text, pictures, audio and video, provided to the Chinese public will be subject to the new rules.
China says generative AI rules to apply only to products for the public
Reuters
Josh Ye
China published measures on Thursday to manage its booming generative artificial intelligence industry, softening its tone from an earlier draft, and said regulators would seek to support development of the technology. The rules, set to take effect on Aug. 15 and which Beijing described as "interim", come after authorities signalled the end of their years-long crackdown on the tech industry, whose help they seek to spur an economy recovering more slowly than expected after the scrapping of COVID-19 curbs.
Beijing's regulatory crackdown wipes $1.1 trillion off Chinese Big Tech
Reuters
Donny Kwok and Scott Murdoch
China's major tech companies have shed more than $1 trillion in value -equivalent to the entire Dutch economy - since the government's regulatory crackdown on the sector began more than two years ago, according to Refinitiv data. Investors are now hoping the strict rules that have stymied growth since late 2020 will start to ease, after the People's Bank of China indicated a change in direction could be under way.
Chinese ministry holds meeting with Xiaomi, iFlytek and Alibaba Cloud
Reuters
China's science and technology ministry held a meeting on July 5 with firms including Xiaomi, iFlytek and Alibaba Cloud to discuss innovation as well as national strategic scientific and technological initiatives, the ministry said on Tuesday. China will support private enterprises to create leading science and technology enterprises, and encourage more talents to gather in leading private science and technology enterprises, the minister Wang Zhigang said in a statement.
Chip wars: How ‘chiplets’ are emerging as a core part of China’s tech strategy
Reuters
Jane Lee and Eduardo Baptista
The sale of struggling Silicon Valley startup zGlue’s patents in 2021 was unremarkable except for one detail: The technology it owned, designed to cut the time and cost for making chips, showed up 13 months later in the patent portfolio of Chipuller, a startup in China’s southern tech hub Shenzhen. Chipuller purchased what is referred to as chiplet technology, a cost efficient way to package groups of small semiconductors to form one powerful brain capable of powering everything from data centers to gadgets at home.
Tech war: Intel and Nvidia continue to push purpose-built chips for training AI systems in China amid US export restrictions
South China Morning Post
Ben Jiang
Semiconductor giant Intel Corp has brought its latest processor for artificial intelligence deep-learning applications to mainland China, where massive demand for US-restricted advanced chips has created a major under-the-counter trade for smuggled graphics processing units from Nvidia Corp. At a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday, Intel executives presented the company’s Gaudi2 processor, a device that is not subject to US export restrictions, as its answer to Nvidia’s premium A100 GPU, which is widely used for training AI systems.
China’s chip metal export curbs are ‘a wake up call’ for countries to diversify their supply chains
CNBC
Sheila Chiang
China’s metal export curbs on gallium and germanium could spur some countries to diversify their supply chains away from China. China’s commerce ministry announced last week that it is restricting the exports of two metals — gallium and germanium — key to the manufacturing of semiconductors starting Aug. 1, in what is seen as a warning to Europe and the U.S. in a tech war over advanced chips.
Tech war: China’s top AI server maker Inspur issues bleak profit warning as US chip restrictions bite
South China Morning Post
Tracy Qu
China’s top artificial intelligence server maker, which controls about half of the domestic market, warned on Tuesday that its revenue in the first half of 2023 may drop by 30 per cent due to difficulties in obtaining advanced chips, sending its shares sharply lower.
USA
The FTC is investigating whether ChatGPT harms consumers
The Washington Post
Cat Zakrzewski
The Federal Trade Commission has opened an expansive investigation into OpenAI, probing whether the maker of the popular ChatGPT bot has run afoul of consumer protection laws by putting personal reputations and data at risk. The agency this week sent the San Francisco company a 20-page demand for records about how it addresses risks related to its AI models, according to a document reviewed by The Washington Post.
White House unveils ‘roadmap’ for national cyber strategy goals
The Record by Recorded Future
Suzanne Smalley
The Office of the National Cyber Director unveiled the implementation plan for its sweeping national cybersecurity strategy Thursday, setting deadlines for 18 different government agencies to put in motion changes designed to make cybersecurity regulation more robust and streamlined while increasing corporate responsibility for protecting critical infrastructure from cyberattacks.
Fact sheet: Biden-Harris Administration publishes the National Cybersecurity Strategy Implementation Plan
The White House
The Biden-Harris Administration’s recently released National Cybersecurity Strategy calls for two fundamental shifts in how the United States allocates roles, responsibilities, and resources in cyberspace: Ensuring that the biggest, most capable, and best-positioned entities – in the public and private sectors – assume a greater share of the burden for mitigating cyber risk; increasing incentives to favor long-term investments into cybersecurity.
‘An act of war’: Inside America’s silicon blockade against China
The New York Times
Alex W. Palmer
Last October, the United States Bureau of Industry and Security issued a document that — underneath its 139 pages of dense bureaucratic jargon and minute technical detail — amounted to a declaration of economic war on China. The magnitude of the act was made all the more remarkable by the relative obscurity of its source. One of 13 bureaus within the Department of Commerce, the smallest federal department by funding, B.I.S. is tiny.
CISA warns of dangerous Rockwell industrial bug being exploited by gov’t group
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned on Wednesday of a vulnerability affecting industrial technology from Rockwell Automation that is being exploited by government hackers.
Cybersecurity professional accused of stealing $9M in crypto
TechCrunch
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
The U.S. government accused a cybersecurity professional of hacking a cryptocurrency exchange and stealing around $9 million in cryptocurrency, in what looks like a case of an ethical hacker turning rogue, then trying to appear ethical again.
FTC to appeal judge's decision to let Microsoft buy Activision
Reuters
Diane Bartz
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday it was appealing a federal judge's ruling that Microsoft could go forward with its $69 billion purchase of "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard. Microsoft's victory in court on Tuesday, and a subsequent climbdown by Britain's competition authority, brought the tech giant two steps closer to finalizing its tie-up with Activision, Microsoft's biggest deal ever.
North Asia
TSMC, Foxconn hit in biggest Taiwan tech slump in 10 years
Nikkei Asia
Yu Nakamura
Taiwan's IT industry is facing its biggest slump on record, with the combined sales of 19 major companies down about 20% on the year in June, as the post-pandemic drop in demand for smartphones and computers hits component makers hard. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s June sales fell 11.1% to 156.4 billion New Taiwan dollars ($5 billion), the fourth consecutive month of decline.
Nagoya Port cyberattack may become security wake-up call
The Asahi Shimbun
Nagoya Port needed three days to fully recover from a cyberattack that crippled every procedure in loading and unloading cargo. The ransomware attack, apparently perpetrated by Lockbit, a Russia-based cybercrime organization, affected an estimated 15,000 containers and related businesses, including Toyota Motor Corp., which has a manufacturing hub in the region.
Southeast Asia
Philippine raid on Chinese firm spotlights human trafficking issues in online gaming industry
South China Morning Post
Raissa Robles
A Chinese-run gambling company is under investigation following claims by employees of delayed salaries, prostitution activities and love scams, in a case that has highlighted the complex issues surrounding the Philippine online gaming industry. A 2,000-strong team from the Philippine police force raided Xinchuang Network Technology, Inc – a vast Chinese-run online gaming complex in southern Manila – on June 26, seizing computer data and safety box vaults allegedly in connection with human trafficking and “love scam” activities inside the complex. More than 2,700 people, including 1,534 Filipinos and 1,190 foreigners, were rescued.
Google Maps redacts Vietnamese flag from Spratly Islands
VnExpress
Viet Tuan, Luu Quy
A Vietnamese flag atop Spratly Island appears blank white on Google Maps, with the all-seeing tech giant saying the flag cannot be seen due to "low-quality image." When users accessed Google Maps satellite images on Tuesday morning, they reported that the rooftop of a building on Spratly Island, part of Vietnam's Spratly Archipelago, appeared white while in reality it was built as an image of the Vietnamese flag made from ceramics.
Bangkok Post among 300 victims of ransomware attack
Bangkok Post
The Bangkok Post website was inaccessible for most of Wednesday, along with the sites of hundreds of other internet service users, due to a rare ransomware attack, according to its long-standing service provider. Internet Thailand Plc reported on Wednesday that it experienced a ransomware attack on its hypervisor management system for the first time, affecting 300 out of its 2,500 clients. The company aimed to fully restore services to the affected parties by midnight on Wednesday.
The world's strongmen continue to bend social media to their will
The New York Times
Samuel Woolley
The Cambodian People’s Party created its Cyber War Room about a decade ago. The goal was to support Prime Minister Hun Sen’s regime through social media propagandizing. It will come as no surprise when I say that Big Tech has a lot of problems on its plate, including fury about transnational digital propaganda campaigns, a global outcry about networked disinformation during the pandemic and panic about both real and hypothetical threats of generative A.I.
South & Central Asia
Ukraine - Russia
Russian hackers lured diplomats in Ukraine with cheap BMW ad
Reuters
James Pearson
Hackers suspected of working for Russia's foreign intelligence agency targeted dozens of diplomats at embassies in Ukraine with a fake used car advert in a bid to break into their computers, according to a cybersecurity firm report published on Wednesday. The wide-reaching espionage activity targeted diplomats working in at least 22 of the roughly 80 foreign missions in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, analysts at Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 research division said in the report.
Europe
NATO allies’ new cyber pledges to remain classified — but here’s what we know
The Record by Recorded Future
Alexander Martin
The official text of the Vilnius Summit Communiqué restates the position of the alliance’s Strategic Concept (2022) that “cyberspace is contested at all times” and is not just a concern for NATO during the circumstances of an international armed conflict. But the communiqué also announces new ground. “Today, we endorse a new concept to enhance the contribution of cyber defense to our overall deterrence and defence posture. It will further integrate NATO’s three cyber defence levels — political, military, and technical — ensuring civil-military cooperation at all times through peacetime, crisis, and conflict, as well as engagement with the private sector, as appropriate. Doing so will enhance our shared situational awareness.”
Big Tech
U.S. big tech won't shake its China addiction
Nikkei Asia
Akito Tanaka and Grace Li
The leaders of America's most powerful tech companies have been parading through Beijing since early spring, following the end of COVID-19 controls and the gradual reopening of China. Even chilly U.S.-China tensions have not stood in the way of a resumption of pre-pandemic business dialogue. In June, following Gates' visit, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Beijing for talks aimed at thawing relations, followed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in July.
Meta cut election teams months before Threads launch, raising concerns for 2024
CNN
Donie O'Sullivan and Sean Lyngaas
Meta has made cuts to its teams that tackle disinformation and coordinated troll and harassment campaigns on its platforms, people with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN, raising concerns ahead of the pivotal 2024 elections in the US and around the world.
Telegram terminates channels marketing child pornography, no response from Hikvision
IPVM
Telegram has now terminated all 7 channels marketing child pornography from hacked Hikvision cameras, which IPVM reported to the platform. While Telegram's actions make it harder for criminals to find buyers for this, this does not stop child pornography from being distributed or watched. Until and unless Hikvision stops allowing the current Hik-Connect app from distributing (effectively live streaming) from victim's cameras and/or resolves the vulnerabilities in those Hikvision cameras, anyone who has previous access remains and the criminals can still sell this through other methods on the dark web.
Artificial Intelligence
Claude 2: ChatGPT rival launches chatbot that can summarise a novel
The Guardian
Dan Milmo
A US artificial intelligence company has launched a rival chatbot to ChatGPT that can summarise novel-sized blocks of text and operates from a list of safety principles drawn from sources such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Anthropic has made the chatbot, Claude 2, publicly available in the US and the UK, as the debate grows over the safety and societal risk of artificial intelligence.
Elon Musk says China is ‘on team humanity’, willing to work with US on existential AI threats
South China Morning Post
Dylan Butts
Elon Musk called himself “kind of pro-China” and said Beijing was willing to work on global artificial intelligence regulations as part of “team humanity”, in remarks made during a live audio conversation on his social media platform Twitter. Musk, one of AI’s most outspoken sceptics, has argued that nations should come together to regulate and control the rapid development of the technology to mitigate civilisation-level threats and avoid a potential “Terminator future”.
Misc
More countries across Asia are debuting digital artificial intelligence news readers. Could Australia follow suit?
ABC
Hanna Samosir
China became the first country in the world to introduce AI news presenters in 2018, with a pair of suit-wearing men delivering a bulletin for China's state-run Xinhua news agency — one speaking Chinese and the other speaking English. India followed in April this year, launching the AI-powered anchor Sana at an event attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Rather than being an avatar of an existing newsreader, Sana was created with her own image and personality.
AI-generated hits of Hong Kong stars surprise fans, bring dead singers back to life and raise questions about copyright
South China Morning Post
Oscar Liu
Hong Kong cult icon Wan Kwong was astonished when Cantopop songs supposedly sung by him became hits with listeners recently, thanks to the use of artificial intelligence. YouTube content creators used AI to generate his voice before integrating it with two songs – “Solitude” by songwriter Terence Lam Ka-him and “My Dear Friend” by Keung To of Hong Kong boy band Mirror. Both attracted more than a million views in two weeks in early June.
Research
Email-based phishing attacks has surged 464% in 2023: Report
ETCIO South-East Asia
The comprehensive study, based on data captured from more than one million global endpoints, provides insight into the evolving cybersecurity landscape and uncovers the growing utilisation of generative artificial intelligence systems, such as ChatGPT, by cybercriminals to craft malicious content and execute sophisticated attacks.
Responsible behaviour in cyberspace: global narratives and practice
Universiteit Leiden
François Delerue, Arun Sukumar and Dennis Broeders
Drawing on academic and policy frameworks, papers presented at the conference explored whether and how global, regional, and national narratives on responsible state behaviour in cyberspace have translated into practice. Several papers offer prescriptive solutions to bridge narrative and practice, where gaps exist.
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