Meta to Scale Back PG-13 References Following Motion Picture Association Agreement

Meta and the Motion Picture Association have resolved a dispute regarding Meta's use of the PG-13 film rating for its teen accounts. Meta has agreed to substantially reduce references to the rating and include a disclaimer that the MPA is not involved with its ratings.

Credit: UNSPLASH

This agreement settles an earlier disagreement where the MPA sent a cease-and-desist letter to Meta. The association argued Meta's use of the PG-13 label risked confusing parents, infringed its trademark, and was misleading.

Charles Rivkin, chairman and chief executive officer of the MPA, stated, "While we welcome efforts to protect kids from content that may not be appropriate for them, this agreement helps ensure that parents do not conflate the two systems, which operate in very different contexts."

A Meta spokesperson explained the company's goal was to help parents better understand its teen content policies by drawing inspiration from a framework families already know. Meta rigorously reviewed and updated these policies based on 13+ movie ratings criteria and parent feedback.

The spokesperson added, "While that's not changing, we've taken the MPA's feedback on how we talk about that work." The MPA had also asserted Meta's claim that its filters align with the PG-13 rating was "literally false and highly misleading."

The MPA argued Meta's automated systems do not follow the curated, consensus-based process used for the film rating system. The association's voluntary rating system assesses films based on their suitability for children, with PG-13 meaning parental guidance is recommended for viewers under 13.

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• Meta will reduce PG-13 references for teen accounts.

• Meta will add a disclaimer stating the MPA is not involved with its ratings.

• The agreement resolves a dispute over trademark infringement and parental confusion.

Source: REUTERS

Chinese Tech Giants Boost AI Recruitment Amid Global Talent Scramble

Chinese technology companies Xiaomi and Alibaba Group Holding have launched extensive recruitment drives. These efforts focus heavily on artificial intelligence talent, reflecting fierce global competition. Both firms are increasingly positioning themselves as AI-first businesses.

Credit: XIAOMI

Artificial intelligence-related positions now account for over 80% of Alibaba’s open roles. This marks an increase from approximately 60% during previous recruitment periods. These roles span 16 business units, including Alibaba Cloud and its chip design unit T-Head.

Alibaba recently announced the addition of seven new types of AI-related positions to its campus recruitment programme. These new roles include positions within the field of agentic artificial intelligence.

Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun stated the company’s global recruitment campaign targets top industry talent, recent graduates, and interns. The official recruitment website lists over 200 available positions. These roles are across cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing.

Xiaomi plans to invest up to 16 billion yuan (USD 2.3 billion) this year in AI research, development, and capital expenditure. This is part of a larger 60 billion yuan AI spend over the next three years. The Beijing-based company reported shrinking profits recently, influenced by rising memory chip costs affecting smartphone shipments.

Over 30 of Xiaomi’s current open positions are for Miclaw engineers. Miclaw is Xiaomi’s version of the open-source AI agent tool OpenClaw. New recruits are expected to work on resolving hardware constraints, such as device lag, overheating, and throttling caused by multiple AI agents making concurrent requests.

Additionally, 17 vacancies exist for engineers to work on Xiaomi’s flagship foundational model family, MiMo. More than 60 positions cover Xiaomi’s hardware offerings, including robots and autonomous vehicles. Xiaomi’s MiMo foundational models have been well-received within the global developer community.

Third-party benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis recently ranked Xiaomi’s latest closed-source MiMo-V2-Pro model as a leading Chinese model for overall capabilities. Luo Fuli, a researcher born in 1995, heads Xiaomi’s model development efforts. Luo was recruited from AI start-up DeepSeek last year.

Lei mentioned that the MiMo team has an average age of 25.

Competition for AI talent among technology companies worldwide has become closely monitored. This is due to the increasing importance of core technical breakthroughs for commercial success.

Internal personnel changes at Alibaba recently garnered significant attention. Lin Junyang, a technical lead for the Qwen team, departed, and Zhou Hao, a former Google senior staff research scientist, joined the company.

Another recent high-profile departure from a Chinese tech giant involved Wang Yunhe. Wang, the former director of Huawei Technologies’ core model development team Noah’s Ark Lab, left the company after nine years, domestic media reported last week.

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• Xiaomi and Alibaba have launched significant recruitment drives focusing on artificial intelligence.

• AI-related roles constitute over 80% of Alibaba's current job openings, up from previous recruitment periods.

• Xiaomi plans to invest 60 billion yuan in AI over the next three years, including 16 billion yuan (USD 2.3 billion) this year.

Source: SCMP

Microsoft Expands Copilot Capabilities, Rolls Out Cowork Tool

Microsoft has introduced new features for its Copilot research assistant, allowing users to employ multiple artificial intelligence models simultaneously within single workflows. This move represents the latest effort by the Big Tech organisation to enhance its AI offering and encourage greater adoption across its user base.

Credit: MICROSOFT

One new feature, named "Critique," enables Copilot's Researcher agent to draw outputs from both OpenAI's GPT and Anthropic's Claude models for each response. This contrasts with the previous method of relying on a single model for content generation.

Initially, GPT generates the primary response. Claude subsequently reviews this output for accuracy and overall quality before presenting it to the user. According to Microsoft, the company anticipates making this workflow bi-directional in the future. This would allow GPT to also review drafts produced by Claude.

But having diverse models from various vendors integrated into Copilot holds significant appeal. Nicole Herskowitz, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365 and Copilot, stated in an interview with Reuters that the organisation is advancing this integration. She indicated that customers would gain direct benefits from the models actively collaborating.

This multi-model strategy aims to accelerate user workflows, reduce instances of AI hallucinations, where systems generate factually incorrect information, and ultimately produce more dependable outputs. Herskowitz added that these improvements are expected to increase productivity and quality for customers.

The company is also launching 'Council,' a feature designed to facilitate side-by-side comparisons of responses from different AI models. These upgrades coincide with Microsoft making its new Copilot Cowork agentic AI tool more widely accessible to participants in its 'Frontier' programme. This programme grants customers early access to some of its most recent AI capabilities.

And Microsoft had previously unveiled Copilot Cowork in a testing phase earlier, leveraging Anthropic's popular Claude Cowork product. This development capitalises on the growing demand for autonomous AI agents within the industry.

The Windows maker has maintained a competitive pace, continually improving its Copilot assistant. This effort seeks to drive increased adoption amidst intense competition from rivals, including Google's Gemini, and other autonomous agents such as Claude Cowork.

Microsoft shares rose approximately 1 per cent following these announcements. However, the stock is currently on course for its poorest quarterly performance in a considerable period, with a decline of nearly 25 per cent. This trajectory reflects a broader waning of investor optimism concerning AI.

So, the company's strategic focus remains on refining its AI tools. It seeks to consolidate its position within a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

• Microsoft introduced "Critique" and "Council" features in Copilot.

• "Critique" uses OpenAI's GPT and Anthropic's Claude for multi-model response generation and review.

• The company is making its Copilot Cowork agentic AI tool more broadly available through its 'Frontier' programme.

• These enhancements aim to improve workflow efficiency, reduce AI inaccuracies, and boost output reliability.

• Microsoft faces ongoing competition from other AI developers in the autonomous agent market.

Source: Reuters