AI news and funding updates from the last 24 hours(21th April 2025):

✅ Intel

- New CTO & Head of AI: Intel has appointed Sachin Katti as Chief Technology Officer and Head of AI, reporting directly to interim CEO Lip‑Bu Tan.

- Centralized AI Leadership: This move brings all AI strategy, product development, and Intel Labs under one leader to accelerate innovation.

- Flatter Org Structure: As part of a broader reorganization, key technical leaders now have direct access to CEO Lip‑Bu Tan, and the head of government affairs also reports straight to him.

✅ ByteDance

- Seedream 3.0 Launch: ByteDance unveiled Seedream 3.0, its newest image‑generation model.

- Performance Claims: The company asserts it surpasses OpenAI’s GPT‑4o, citing faster generation, a larger training dataset, and support for up to 2K resolution.

- Benchmark Reality: Independent benchmarks place Seedream 3.0 roughly on par with GPT‑4o and ahead of Google’s Imagen 3, especially in rendering Chinese text and preserving IDs in edits.

- Aesthetic Strengths: ByteDance highlights superior color fidelity and overall image clarity versus occasional yellowish tints from GPT‑4o.

✅ AICTE & IG Drones

- 50 Drone Centres of Excellence: The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and IG Drones are partnering to set up fifty Drone Centres of Excellence in engineering colleges nationwide.

- Skill Development: These centers will train over 10,000 students per year in drone operation and applications—targeting agriculture, defence, and other sectors.

- “Made in India” Ecosystem: The initiative aligns with the ‘Viksit Bharat’ and Atmanirbhar Bharat (self‑reliance) agendas by fostering indigenous drone innovation.

✅ Meta

- AI Age‑Detection on Instagram: Meta is deploying AI to flag accounts that may be misreporting age on Instagram.

- “Teen Accounts” Protections: Suspected under‑18 users are automatically shifted into restricted Teen Accounts—limiting who can message them and what content they see.

- Safety & Education: The system analyzes signals like birthday‑related posts and reports from other users; Meta is also guiding parents on online age‑discussion and has extended Teen Account protections on Facebook and Messenger.

✅ Huawei

- 910C AI Chip Rollout: Huawei is set to begin mass shipments of its new 910C AI accelerator to Chinese customers as soon as next month.

- Domestic Alternative: Built by pairing two 910B GPUs (manufactured by SMIC or, per some reports, TSMC), the 910C aims to fill the gap left by U.S. export curbs on Nvidia’s H100‑class chips.

- Market Impact: Analysts expect the 910C to become the go‑to high‑performance AI processor for China’s leading tech firms.

✅ Other News

- International PhD Student Visa Issues: An AI doctoral student’s F‑1 SEVIS record was suddenly terminated after a disputed criminal‑records check—despite no conviction.

- Wider Visa Crackdown: This case is among over a thousand similar incidents affecting international researchers under stricter U.S. enforcement, raising fears about deterring global talent and delaying critical R&D.

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