Daily Tech Roundup: Tencent Joins Chatbot Race, Tesla Protester Fined for Car Show Stunt

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Tencent launched its AI chatbot app Yuanbao on Thursday. Photo: Tencent Cloud

Welcome to the Daily Tech Roundup — a briefing of the top technology news making headlines in China and the rest of Asia.

Tesla protester ordered to pay $23,400 and apologize for car show stunt

A Chinese woman who staged a protest while standing on the roof of a Tesla car at the Shanghai auto show three years ago was ordered by court to apologize and pay more than 170,000 yuan ($23,400) to the carmaker, Tesla Inc. confirmed with Caixin.

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A Chinese court ordered a woman who protested on a Tesla car to pay $23,400 and apologize; Tesla won another suit worth $275 related to similar claims of brake failure.
By 2035, 90% of China's new car sales will be NEVs, accounting for 38 million units; globally, NEV sales will hit 70%, with China leading the market at 54%.
Tencent launched Yuanbao, an AI chatbot built on its Hunyuan large language model, capable of AI searches, document summarization, writing, and other tasks.

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Who’s Who

Tesla Inc.: Tesla Inc. won a lawsuit in China against a woman who protested on a Tesla car at the 2021 Shanghai auto show, alleging brake failure. She was ordered to apologize and pay $23,400. Another protester was previously ordered to apologize and pay $275. Tesla denied brake malfunction claims, attributing the crash to the driver's speeding.

Tencent Holdings Ltd.: Tencent Holdings Ltd., a major Chinese social media and online gaming company, has launched an AI chatbot app named Yuanbao. Built on Tencent’s own large language model, Hunyuan, Yuanbao aims to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The AI assistant offers features such as AI searches, document summarization, writing, image generation, and personalized AI entity creation for language practice or avatars.

JD Health International Inc.: JD Health International Inc., the healthcare unit of JD.com, has pulled its "family doctor" services and is restructuring its corporate structure after experiencing a 38.7% drop in operating profit and a 4.9% revenue decline in the first quarter. The family doctor business will be merged into internet health care and corporate business units without involving layoffs.

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What Happened When

2021：: A protest involving a Tesla Model 3 occurred at the Shanghai auto show and went viral on social media.

November 2023：: A court ordered one of the two protesters to publicly apologize to Tesla and pay 2,000 yuan ($275) in damages.

First quarter of 2024：: JD Health reported a 38.7% fall in operating profit and a 4.9% drop in revenue.

Late Wednesday, May 29, 2024：: China released a central government work plan relaxing limits on new installations of solar and wind power, raising the curtailment rate to 10%.

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