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Apple reportedly develops its own AI model for China with help from Alibaba

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GURU8 Staff
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Apple is reportedly developing a proprietary large language model for the Chinese market as it works to bring Apple Intelligence to users in the country.

According to Reuters, Apple has trained its own AI model with assistance from Chinese technology company Alibaba. The move represents a shift from Apple’s earlier approach of relying on domestic third party AI models to power Apple Intelligence features in China.

Apple has been working to bring Apple Intelligence to China, but the rollout has faced regulatory hurdles. The company’s latest approach is reportedly designed to give Apple greater control over its AI technology while meeting China’s regulatory requirements.

The company is expected to begin rolling out its AI features in China in the coming months. The approach has been described as a dual track strategy, allowing Apple to use its own model while working with local technology partners to navigate the country’s AI regulations.

Alibaba plays a key role in Apple’s AI plans for China. Apple had previously agreed with Chinese regulators to incorporate Alibaba’s Qwen model into Apple Intelligence features, similar to how Apple integrates ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence in other markets.

Apple briefly published a support document in China explaining how Mac users could connect Alibaba’s Qwen AI with features such as Siri and Writing Tools. The guide was later removed less than a day after it appeared.

The reported development of Apple’s own model could give the company more control over the technology powering Apple Intelligence in China, while still allowing it to work with local partners to meet regulatory requirements.

The move would also make Apple the first foreign company approved by the Chinese government to offer a proprietary AI model in the country, according to the report cited by MacRumors.

Apple’s AI rollout in China is particularly important as the company looks to expand Apple Intelligence globally. While the service has already been introduced in other markets, regulatory requirements have made China a more complicated market for foreign AI providers.

Google Pixel 11 Is Official: Same Look, Smarter AI, and a Price Bump

By
Boses Muhinda
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Google has officially unveiled the Pixel 11 series at its Made by Google event in New York, and the story this year is not about a radical hardware redesign. It is about how much deeper Gemini has been woven into everything the phone does.

The lineup starts at $899 for the base Pixel 11, $1,099 for the Pro, and $1,299 for the Pro XL. All models come with 256GB of storage as standard, and the 128GB option is gone entirely. The top-end Pro XL is $100 more expensive than its predecessor, a price bump Google has attributed to rising component costs. Pre-orders are open today.

Gemini Is Now Doing Things in the Background

The biggest shift this year is how Google has moved Gemini from a feature you activate to an assistant that works on your behalf without you having to ask.

US-based users will be able to use Gemini to order groceries, book rides, get coffee, and even call businesses to make table reservations or schedule appointments. The AI handles the call, you can take over at any point, and a full transcript is available when it is done.

The Magic Cue feature from last year has been upgraded to pull context from across your apps, surfacing suggestions for things like nearby restaurants or shows based on what you are already looking at or doing.

Google’s dictation tool Rambler, which was announced earlier this year, is also arriving on Pixel 11 phones. It cleans up voice input in real time, removing filler words and self-corrections so your transcribed text actually reads the way you intended.

A live translation feature can now work across videos, podcasts, and voice messages, translating the audio into your target language as it plays. Circle to Search, Google’s gesture-based lookup tool, is now accessible directly inside the camera. And for accessibility, a new camera feature uses Gemini to translate sign language into text in real time.

Camera: More AI, Higher Zoom

Google has added a feature called Magic Capture, which shoots a continuous burst of frames between when you press start and end, then picks the best ones automatically. It also auto-crops and unblurs frames before saving, so you get usable photos rather than a pile of shots to sort through.

Zoom has been pushed further. The Pro phones now go up to 120x, up from 100x. The base Pixel 11 gets a 30x zoom, up from 20x. A custom looks feature lets you create personalised filters that appear when you are shooting.

For video, the Pro phones get Instant Night Sight, which captures low-light shots 4.5 times faster than before. 8K video with Video Boost and improved stabilisation are also on the table. A Creator Suite mode turns the phone into a teleprompter while shooting, and footage is automatically saved to its own folder for easy editing.

Hardware Changes

All Pixel 11 phones run on the new Tensor G6 chip, which Google says delivers 20 percent better power efficiency and 25 percent faster browsing. It also enables the faster Night Sight and the 120x zoom on the Pro XL through improved image signal processing.

Display sizes stay the same across the lineup, though Pro models get a slightly brighter panel for better outdoor visibility.

The Pro cameras get an updated main sensor with improved image quality, and a new telephoto sensor that lets in 32 percent more light per shot.

One new hardware detail worth noting is a small LED light built into the back of the phone around the flashlight. It lights up to signal calls or messages from favourite contacts, and also indicates when Gemini is processing something in the background.

Tanzania Is Back: Startups Raised $52 Million in the First Half of 2026

By
Boses Muhinda
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Tanzania’s startup ecosystem has quietly put together one of its strongest funding periods in years, and the numbers are worth paying attention to.

Tanzania startups raised approximately $52 million in the first half of 2026, putting the country among Africa’s top startup funding destinations and marking a sharp recovery from a weak 2025. The rebound signals renewed investor confidence in the market’s technology and entrepreneurship base.

Tanzania joined Morocco and Ghana among ecosystems where at least 10 startups raised $100,000 or more in H1 2026, though several countries including Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya attracted more capital overall.

The nature of who is funding African startups in 2026 has also shifted significantly. The biggest names writing equity cheques into African startups this year are mostly not the usual Silicon Valley venture firms. The first half of 2026 was defined by development finance institutions, a homegrown Moroccan venture fund, and a small group of pan-African investors. The International Finance Corporation, France’s Proparco, and Morocco’s Azur Innovation Fund emerged as the most active equity investors during the period.

For East African founders, Tanzania’s performance is a positive signal. The regional ecosystem, anchored by Kenya at the top, is showing that capital can find its way to strong businesses across more markets than the traditional concentration in Nairobi alone.

Your Next Windows PC Is Getting More Expensive, and it’s not RAMageddon to blame

By
Brian Code
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0

If you were already wincing at PC prices, here is another reason to wait before upgrading.

Microsoft has raised the cost of Windows 11 OEM licences for PC manufacturers by a much higher amount than usual. According to a report from Taiwanese publication United Daily News, certain manufacturers are seeing licensing price hikes of between 7 and 10 percent, starting from July 2026. In previous years, annual licence increases were generally in the low single digits, making this year’s jump significantly steeper.

On average, PCs, laptops, and other devices affected by the higher Windows 11 OEM licence prices are expected to become around 5 percent more expensive as a result. A PC that costs $1,000 could increase to $1,050, while a $2,000 machine could rise to $2,100. e

The cost of buying a Windows 11 licence as an individual consumer remains unchanged, at $99 for Windows 11 Home and $199 for Windows 11 Pro. The increase only applies to manufacturers building hardware that ships with Windows preinstalled.

The timing is particularly painful. PC brands are already facing increasing operational challenges from higher RAM, SSD, and CPU costs, and the Windows licence increase is now adding software pricing pressure on top of existing hardware price pressure. PC end-product prices are expected to rise by another 5 percent in the third quarter.

For anyone shopping for a laptop or desktop in Uganda right now, grey-market and refurbished options are looking more attractive by the month.

Rockstar Put the GTA 6 Gameplay Trailer Behind a Netflix Paywall, and Fans Are Furious

By
Ivan Musiime
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0

Rockstar Games has spent years training fans to pay for everything related to Grand Theft Auto. Now it has gone further than anyone expected, putting the game’s next major trailer behind a subscription wall.

Rockstar has announced that “Grand Theft Auto 6: An Extended Look” will premiere on Netflix on August 27, 2026, before becoming available for free on Rockstar’s YouTube channel and the official GTA 6 website six hours later.

The response from fans has been sharp. “Locking a gameplay trailer behind a Netflix subscription is a new level of greed,” one user wrote on X. Others called it “everything that’s wrong with gaming in 2026” and “making us sub to Netflix to watch an advertisement.”

Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two are now effectively monetising their own advertising. The extended look is a marketing asset, not a piece of content fans have to pay for in order to play the game, yet it has been placed behind a subscription barrier for its premiere window.

In fairness, the exclusivity window is only six hours, and it is all but guaranteed that people will rip the footage and post it online well before the YouTube release. From Netflix’s perspective, the deal is a straightforward win: a cultural moment tied to what is expected to be the biggest game launch in history, driving sign-ups to the platform.

From the fan’s perspective, it is a different story. GTA 6 launches on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S on November 19, 2026.

Deep Learning Indaba 2026 Put Africa’s AI Sovereignty on the World Stage in Lagos

By
Boses Muhinda
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0

The most important AI conference you probably have not heard of wrapped up its Lagos edition this week, and it was bigger and more urgent than ever.

The Deep Learning Indaba 2026 ran from August 2 to 7 at Pan-Atlantic University in Lagos, under the theme “Sovereign Intelligence. African Scale.” As the global AI landscape accelerates toward increasingly powerful systems, the event positioned African researchers at the centre of the conversation about who builds, governs, and benefits from those systems.

The programme addressed six technical themes, including Sovereign African NLP and Language Evaluation, led by Masakhane Workshops targeting community-led data collection for local African languages, and Community-Led Data Infrastructure and Decolonial AI, focused on breaking dependence on western-centric data models.

The numbers behind the event reflect a community that has grown rapidly. Hundreds of researchers, developers, students, and entrepreneurs from across the continent gathered for workshops, research showcases, keynotes, and a pan-African hackathon. The energy and the output from this week in Lagos will feed directly into research pipelines that will eventually show up in language models and AI tools built specifically for African contexts.

As one past attendee put it: “The Indaba showed me that Africa doesn’t just need AI. AI needs Africa. Our languages, data, problems, and ways of knowing have so much to offer global machine learning.”

That is not a slogan. It is a technical reality that is becoming harder for the global AI industry to ignore.

Africa Tech Festival 2026 Is Bringing Google, OpenAI, and Amazon to Cape Town

By
Davis Kawalya
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0

The biggest names in global and African tech are converging on Cape Town later this year, and the conversation they are coming to have is one that matters deeply for the continent’s digital future.

Africa Tech Festival has unveiled the speaker lineup for its 29th edition, with global technology companies represented by Alex Okosi, Managing Director of Africa at Google, who will speak to the scale of investment flowing into the continent’s cloud and AI infrastructure; Emmanuel Lubanzadio, Africa Lead at OpenAI, focusing on AI adoption and readiness across African markets; and Robert Koen, Managing Director for Sub-Saharan Africa at Amazon.

Leaders from Africa’s telecommunications sector will also feature, including Enzo Scarcella, Chief Consumer Officer at MTN Group; Norbert Prihoda, Chief Executive Officer of Tunisie Telecom; and Daddy Yogo Ngbabendo, Group Vice President for Solutions and Architecture at Airtel Africa.

Africa is entering a new phase of digital investment. Significant capital is flowing into AI infrastructure, cloud platforms, subsea cables, fibre networks and data centres across the continent, governments are shaping AI policy, and enterprises are moving from strategy to implementation.

For anyone working in tech, digital marketing, or product in East Africa, the conversations coming out of this event will shape how global platforms and investors think about the continent through 2027 and beyond. Worth watching.

Amazon Just Crossed $3 Trillion in Market Cap and Hiked Its Cloud Spending to $220 Billion

By
Brian Code
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0
Amazon South Africa

Amazon has topped the $3 trillion market cap mark as its stock continued to surge following strong earnings results. The milestone puts Amazon in the same rarefied company as Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia, and it comes on the back of one particularly striking announcement.

Amazon posted booming cloud growth and hiked its 2026 capital expenditure to $220 billion, a figure that reflects the enormous infrastructure investment required to power AI services at scale.

That number is not just large. It is a statement of intent. AWS, Amazon’s cloud division, remains the backbone of a significant share of the world’s AI workloads, and the company is betting that demand will continue to outpace supply. The $220 billion figure covers data centres, chips, networking infrastructure, and the energy systems needed to run them.

For context, the entire GDP of many African nations sits well below that figure. The scale of capital concentration in AI infrastructure is worth paying attention to, not just as a business story but as a signal of where global computing power is being anchored and who controls access to it.

TikTok Is Fighting Its Own AI Spam Problem, and It Is a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds

By
Brian Code
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0
Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

TikTok has spent years building one of the most powerful content recommendation engines on the internet. Now it is turning that energy toward a problem partly of its own making: AI-generated spam.

TikTok has announced it is testing improved detection systems to target accounts dedicated to posting AI-generated spam, which the platform says directly crowds out original creators and undermines trust. The announcement also includes a new guide for users on how to use AI tools responsibly, plus an in-app education hub coming in the following weeks.

The scale of the problem is not small. In the first three months of 2026 alone, TikTok removed more than 86 million fake accounts globally as it strengthened its automated detection systems.

The new detection push will pay particular attention to AI-generated content on topics that can influence public trust and well-being, specifically politics and current events, financial advice, and medical content. TikTok has also joined the C2PA Steering Committee to strengthen AI transparency standards.

Industry observers are reading the move with some scepticism. One marketing executive noted that TikTok’s motivations here are not purely ethical: AI spam performs poorly, which hurts TikTok’s advertising business too. “The platforms can see in their own data what audiences respond to, and they’re quietly rebuilding their rules around real people.”

Still, whether the motivation is moral or commercial, the direction is the right one. For African creators on TikTok, where organic and authentic storytelling has always been the platform’s biggest draw, this is a welcome development.

Your Next Android Phone Is About to Get More Expensive – Qualcomm

By
Boses Muhinda
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0
Photo by William Hook on Unsplash

If you have been thinking about upgrading your Android phone later this year, here is a heads-up that might change your timeline.

Qualcomm has officially confirmed it will raise Snapdragon chip prices starting September 1, 2026. CEO Cristiano Amon addressed it bluntly on the company’s Q3 earnings call, telling CNBC: “Cost went up, prices are going to go up.”

According to a customer letter reviewed by Bloomberg, the increase will be a double-digit percentage, applying to all products shipped after September 1. Qualcomm’s justification is that higher supplier costs can no longer be absorbed internally.

The devices affected are not just your typical Samsung flagship. Snapdragon powers Android phones from Samsung, Xiaomi, and OnePlus, as well as a growing share of Windows PCs, Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses and Quest headsets, premium tablets, foldables, and more.

The root cause sits deeper than Qualcomm alone. A massive surge in AI data center construction has consumed enormous volumes of memory chips and semiconductors, which are the same components that go into consumer devices. Samsung has already raised prices on its latest foldables, and Google has confirmed Pixel price increases as well, signalling that the squeeze is systemic rather than the choice of any single brand.

For consumers in Uganda and across East Africa, where many flagship Android devices already carry a premium over US prices, this is worth paying attention to. Phones ordered from abroad or through grey-market channels before September 1 will likely be sourced from pre-hike stock. After that date, expect prices to keep climbing through 2026 and into 2027.

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