EV festive sales get GST boost; Breaking the manual scavenging cycle

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Abhishek Bachchan and his wife, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, have asked a judge to remove and prohibit the creation of AI videos infringing their intellectual property rights, Reuters reports. Google’s video arm, YouTube, is at the centre of the issue. 

While other celebrities have taken legal recourse to protect their digital identities, the Bachchans’ lawsuit is the most high-profile so far about the risk that misleading or deepfake YouTube videos could train other AI models.

Elsewhere, Wikimedia Deutschland has announced a new database that will make Wikipedia’s wealth of knowledge more accessible to AI models, TechCrunch reported. The new project comes as AI developers are scrambling for high-quality data sources to fine-tune models.

Speaking of Wikipedia, Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI is developing a new digital encyclopedia called Grokipedia.

ICYMI: AI and Wikipedia are sending rare languages into a downward spiral

Meanwhile, even software giants such as Adobe aren’t safe from AI-led disruption. Last week, Morgan Stanley slashed its price target for the company, warning that Adobe hasn’t taken meaningful steps to keep up with the latest technology. 

Lastly, Meta is attempting to tie its billion-dollar investments into generative AI with its core online advertising business. This means that soon users will see ads and other content based on their interactions with the company’s AI tools, CNBC reports. 

AI chatbots are listening!

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• EV festive sales get GST boost
• Breaking the manual scavenging cycle

Here’s your trivia for today: Universal Studios paid Michael Crichton $2 million for which novel before it was even published?

Electric vehicles

EV festive sales get GST boost

The 2025 festive season came after a crucial development by the Indian government—the GST slab revamp. Under the new structure, petrol and diesel-run vehicles were moved to a lower GST slab of 18% compared to the previous slab of 28%. 

This helped narrow the price gap between ICE vehicles and EVs, sparking concerns within the industry. However, industry experts anticipate that electric vehicle sales will see growth compared to last year’s festive sales.

Key takeaways:

• Festive sales, a period of exuberant discounts and offers that is met with rising demand due to auspicious purchase timing, is often cited to be a golden period for companies across sectors, including big-ticket purchases such as vehicles.
• While demand across vehicle categories sees an uptick, two-wheelers are expected to see rising demand, followed by three-wheelers and four-wheelers, especially with players like Tata, BYD, Mahindra, and MG having released new vehicle variants this year in electric cars.
• In the two-wheeler segment, both TVS Motor and Ather Energy have sold more units in September this year than they did last year.

Social impact

Breaking the manual scavenging cycle

For Vimal Kumar, founder of the non-profit, Movement for Scavenger Community (MSC), the project was deeply personal. Born into the manual scavenging community, his lived experiences had shown him from a young age the crushing weight of caste-based discrimination and the indignity of a practice that, though banned on paper, still thrived across many states in India.

New hope:

• Growing up on the fringes of Ladwa city in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district, Kumar witnessed his community being separated not just by walls and roads, but by dignity and opportunity.
• In January 2012, MSC started its first community resource centre in Ladwa, the Dr BR Ambedkar Community Resource Centre. By the time the pandemic hit, they were running eight centres.
• MSC currently organises leadership-building workshops where teachers, volunteers, and students from different backgrounds come together to discuss ideas, challenges, and solutions, and build an ecosystem to support each other.

News & updates

• Stargate: Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have signed letters of intent to supply memory chips for OpenAI's data centres, as South Korean chipmakers join forces with the ChatGPT maker to meet rising demand from its Stargate project.
• Yellow metal: Gold prices soared to new highs on Wednesday, as the US government entered its first shutdown in almost seven years after lawmakers failed to reach a deal on government funding. Spot gold hit a record of $3,894.63 an ounce.
• AI in governance: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed on Wednesday to make Europe's biggest economy competitive again after the cabinet approved measures aimed at reducing bureaucracy and making it quicker and easier to do business through AI and digitisation.

Universal Studios paid Michael Crichton $2 million for which novel before it was even published?

Answer: Jurassic Park

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