Today’s Cache
27 June 2024

Top tech news of the day, curated by The Hindu’s Tech writers.

Today’s Cache | Amazon crosses $2 trillion in value; Apple supplier Foxconn said to reject married women from jobs; YouTube in talks with labels to license music

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Amazon crosses $2 trillion in value
Amazon has crossed the exclusive $2 trillion mark and joined the exclusive club after investors pushed up the company’s stock market value past the noted benchmark. The share value of the e-commerce giant ended up almost 4% higher at a valuation of $2.01 trillion. The company’s stock grew by 52% in the past 12 months due to optimism for their investments in artificial intelligence.

Amazon has joined other tech companies with valuations at and above $2 trillion like Google’s parent Alphabet, software company Microsoft, iPhone manufacturer Apple and AI chipmaker Nvidia. Buoyed by AI applications, Nvidia too touched the $3 trillion valuation to become the most valuable company in the world for a short while. Amazon has been investing in AI as interest in the technology has reached new heights. It has released business-side products and a new chatbot called Q for corporate clients that use their computing unit AWS. The company has also cut costs via layoffs of more than 27,000 employees across its divisions.

Apple supplier Foxconn said to reject married women from jobs
A new Reuters report has revealed that Apple supplier Foxconn has discriminated married women and refused them jobs at their main iPhone assembly plant given their family-related responsibilities. Sources including a former human resources exec at Foxconn India said that execs were asked not to hire married women because of societal pressures saying women had babies after marriage. This was reiterated by 17 employees from more than a dozen Foxconn hiring agencies in India and four current and former company HR execs.

The report also revealed that this ban was relaxed when there were labour shortages while in some cases hiring agencies help female candidates conceal their marital status to get jobs. These instances were found to be happening between 2023 and 2024. Foxconn and Apple have admitted to lapses in hiring practices in 2022 saying they have worked to address these issues. Meanwhile, the federal labour ministry has sought a detailed report from Tamil Nadu following these reports.

YouTube in talks with labels to license music
YouTube is in discussions with major music record labels like Universal, Warner and Sony to license their songs to train an AI tool that is in the works. The platform is planning to release a new AI tool this year that will clone songs by popular artists. The deal is a part of YouTube’s efforts to appease artists who have opposed the use of AI tech to make music. YouTube had started testing a generative AI tool called Dream Track which had signed on to just 10 music artists like John Legend and Troye Sivan but wants to expand to add more now.

The deals will be based on the artists that are signed on instead of how content licensing deals have recently been struck. The responsibility to convince other artists falls upon the music labels.
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