It’s a wrap: News this week

This week has been eventful on the tech front. From IT amendment rules, Indian Space Policy, and India’s stand on artificial intelligence regulation to continued layoffs, Apple’s retail store in India, there is much to catch up on. This is the list of the most important developments this week for a quick catch up:

India space and tech 

The Union Cabinet approved the Indian Space Policy 2023 on April 6 which lays down the role of organisations like the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), NewSpace India, public-private mediator IN-SPACe, and other private entities. The policy also facilitates larger participation of research, academia, and the industry.

Further, on Sunday, ISRO successfully conducted the first unmanned landing process of its reusable rocket under the Reusable Launch Vehicle Autonomous Landing Mission (RLV-LEX).

Just two days later, private homegrown space startup Skyroot Aerospace test-fired Dhawan-II for 200 seconds. Dhawan-II is the firm’s second fully 3D-printed cryogenic rocket; its predecessor Dhawan-I was tested in November 2021.

Govt notifies IT rules for gaming

On Thursday, the Indian government notified the amended Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023,  adding online gaming firms as intermediaries. The new rules disallow trust and for-profit organisations to form self-regulation and specify what kind of members can be part of these bodies.

Further, the Centre also announced proposed amendments to the IT Rules which mandate a government-appointed organisation to identify false and misleading content related to the government.

Apple’s first retail store in India

On Wednesday, Apple released a picture of the barricade of its retail store in Mumbai, a first in India. The Cupertino-based company hasn’t announced the formal date of opening, but the first Apple store will be at the Bandra Kurla Complex.

India has been among the fastest-growing markets for Apple over the past few quarters, even as demand has slumped in many of its traditional markets. The firm reported a quarterly revenue decline of 5% year-on-year (YoY) in the December quarter, but posted double-digit growth in India and set a quarterly revenue record for itself.

Proposed ban on ChatGPT 

Just a few days after Italy announced a temporary ban on OpenAI’s ChatGPT on the grounds of privacy concerns, Germany, too, is now considering taking similar steps. In an interview with the German newspaper Handelsblatt, the country’s data protection chief Ulrich Kelber said that the German authorities were in touch with Italian counterparts on the matter and that similar action was possible in Germany too. ChatGPT is already banned in countries like China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

In related news from India, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw while responding to a parliament question on AI, said that the government does not have any plans to regulate the growth of AI. However, the government has begun standardising responsible AI and is urging organisations to adopt best practices.

Meta’s SAM

On Wednesday, Facebook-parent Meta introduced the Segment Anything Model (SAM). An artificial intelligence model, SAM can pick out individuals within an image, even if the model hasn’t been trained on the selected objects. Along with the model, the company has also published a dataset of image annotations, claiming it to be the most extensive of its kind.

Meta said that SAM would be appropriate for tasks requiring the identification and segmentation of any object within an image, especially in multimodel understanding of the world. Even in the virtual reality and augmented reality domain, SAM could enable selecting an object based on the user’s gaze, and then lifting it into 3D, the company added.

More layoffs 

E-commerce company Amazon laid off over 100 employees in its video game divisions. In a memo to the employees, Christoph Hartmann, vice president, Amazon Games said that staff from Prime Gaming, Game Growth, and the San Diego studio will be impacted. He also added that going forward, the resources will be realigned to focus on content.

Apple, which for long had not announced any layoffs till now, has also reportedly let go of a small percentage of roles within its corporate retail teams, as per Bloomberg’s report.

Closer home, delivery app Dunzo has laid off 30% of its staff, impacting 300 people. Notably, the Reliance-backed company had recently secured $75 million through convertible notes.