Your Friday Briefing: Dueling Summits

Before the G7, China holds its own summit

As leaders of the world’s wealthiest large democracies gathered in Japan for the G7 summit, which begins today, China kicked off its own conference with the leaders of five Central Asian countries. The split-screen diplomacy comes as tensions rise between the West and China.

Beijing’s inaugural China-Central Asia summit, which began yesterday, is part of its effort to counter what it sees as a U.S.-dominated world order that is trying to contain and suppress China. (At the G7, leaders will address what the U.S. describes as China’s growing assertiveness.)

China greeted the leaders of five former Soviet republics — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — on the tarmac with a huge crowd of dancers and jumping children. With the two-day summit, China is trying to fill some of the void left by Russia. The war in Ukraine has weakened some of Russia’s influence in Central Asia, and China sees an opening.

China’s interest in the region also stems from concerns about violence and ethnic tensions in the country’s region of Xinjiang, which shares a border with Central Asian countries. China sees economic prosperity in the region as a way to further stabilize Xinjiang, analysts say.

Meta gave away its A.I. crown jewels

The tech industry’s race to develop artificial intelligence has been upended by a decision to give away a powerful system for free. In February, Meta released LLaMA, an A.I. technology similar to the one powering ChatGPT, as open-source software that anyone can use to build their own chatbot.

“Meta now has zero control,” our colleague Cade Metz told us. “It is out in the wild.”

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, believes that sharing its underlying A.I. engines will spread the company’s influence and undercut its rivals. Meanwhile, companies like Google and OpenAI have grown only more secretive about their A.I. tools, fearing they will be used to spread disinformation, hate speech and other toxic content.

“Open source tends to win,” Cade said. “The difference now: The tech is potentially dangerous.”

Separately: OpenAI unveiled a new version of ChatGPT for the iPhone that responds to voice prompts.

Myanmar’s junta stymies aid

Days after Cyclone Mocha made landfall in Myanmar aid groups are still waiting for the military regime’s approval to deliver supplies. For survivors, threats are growing.

Aid groups fear that the death toll — estimated by some at more than 450 — will only rise as people face food shortages, disease, a lack of clean water and the loss of their homes. Survivors also face the threat of unexploded land mines that may have shifted during the flooding.

The civil war is also complicating aid efforts. The fighting is taking place in many of the areas hit by the cyclone. Rescue workers, activists and survivors say the junta is reluctant to give outsiders access because it wants to control who receives aid.

Background: In 2008, Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar and killed more than 135,000 people. The death toll also climbed in the storm’s aftermath and the military government was criticized for its slow response.

Refugees: Most of the dead were Rohingya Muslims who were among those moved into relocation camps more than a decade ago, the minister of humanitarian affairs and disaster management for the rival National Unity Government said.

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Did Warhol break copyright law?

The U.S. Supreme Court certainly thinks so.

In a 7 to 2 ruling, the justices said the artist was not entitled to appropriate someone else’s photo of Prince into a portrait series.

The photographer’s “original works, like those of other photographers, are entitled to copyright protection, even against famous artists,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority. The photographer, Lynn Goldsmith, received almost no money or mainstream credit for the image.

In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the decision “will stifle creativity of every sort” and “make our world poorer.” The art world largely agrees: Many feared this outcome, arguing that artists borrow from each other all the time. (They also note that Andy Warhol, who died in 1987, altered the photograph in various ways.)

“There’s a lot that judges can do with the stroke of a pen, but rewriting art history isn’t one of them,” a Warhol biographer and critic wrote in The Times. “They’re stuck with appropriation as one of the great artistic innovations of the modern era. Their job is to make sure the law recognizes that.”

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