China’s Xiaomi Q4 2023 Revenue Rises 11%, Beats Estimates 

A visitor looks at a Xiaomi Mix Fold 3 model smartphone at its store at a shopping mall in Beijing on March 19, 2024. (AFP)
A visitor looks at a Xiaomi Mix Fold 3 model smartphone at its store at a shopping mall in Beijing on March 19, 2024. (AFP)
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China’s Xiaomi Q4 2023 Revenue Rises 11%, Beats Estimates 

A visitor looks at a Xiaomi Mix Fold 3 model smartphone at its store at a shopping mall in Beijing on March 19, 2024. (AFP)
A visitor looks at a Xiaomi Mix Fold 3 model smartphone at its store at a shopping mall in Beijing on March 19, 2024. (AFP)

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi reported a 10.9% rise in fourth-quarter revenue on Tuesday, boosted by strong smartphone sales in an industry showing signs of recovery.

Revenue reached 73.24 billion yuan ($10.17 billion) in October-December, versus the 73.17 billion yuan average of 15 analyst estimates compiled by LSEG.

Adjusted net profit rose 236.1% from the same period a year earlier to 4.9 billion yuan. That compared with the 3.89 billion yuan average analyst estimate.



Alphabet to Roll out Image Generation of People on Gemini after Pause

A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
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Alphabet to Roll out Image Generation of People on Gemini after Pause

A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)

Alphabet's Google said on Wednesday it has updated Gemini's AI image-creation model and would roll out the generation of visuals of people in the coming days, after months-long pause of the capability.

In February, Google had paused its AI tool that creates images of people, following inaccuracies in some historical depictions generated by the model.

The issues, where the AI model returned historical images which were sometimes inaccurate, drew flak from users.

The company said it has worked to improve the product, adhere to "product principles" and simulated situations to find weaknesses.

The feature will be made available first to paid users of the Gemini AI chatbot, starting in English and later roll out the model to bring more users and languages.

Google said it has improved the Imagen 3 model to create better images of people, but it would not generate images of specific people, children or graphic content.

OpenAI's Dall-E, Microsoft's CoPilot and recently xAI's Grok are among other AI chatbots that can now generate images.

The search engine giant also said over the coming days, subscribers to Gemini Advanced, Business and Enterprise would have access to chatting with "Gems" or chatbots customized for specific purposes.

Users can write specific instructions for particular purposes and create a Gem, saving them time from rewriting prompts for repetitive use cases.