A group of Tesla shareholders is urging investors to vote against CEO Elon Musk’s compensation package worth more than $40 billion, arguing that it is not in the company’s best interests.

Tesla is grappling with declining global sales, sluggish electric car demand, an older model lineup, and a stock price that has fallen 30% this year.

The shareholder group, which includes New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, SOC Investment Group, and Amalgamated Bank, stated in a letter to shareholders that ratifying Musk’s pay deal will not positively impact Tesla’s long-term growth and stability.

Tesla | Reddit Image

Group Of Tesla Shareholders Ask Investors To Vote Against Musk’s Compensation Package

There is also concern that ratifying the remuneration package may result in litigation alleging corporate waste. According to the letter, Musk is perceived as a part-time CEO at Tesla, with his time increasingly being spent on other business commitments.

“Shareholders should not believe that this reward has any incentive effect—it does not. “What it does have is an excessiveness problem, which has been obvious since the beginning,” the organization stated.

They highlighted that if shareholders approve the remuneration package, another plan may be proposed next year.

“Given Tesla’s history of exponentially larger awards, Musk may well ask for another award,” the organization stated.

The group also requests that investors vote against the reelection of board members Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s brother, and James Murdoch, a former executive at media conglomerate Twenty-First Century Fox

Tesla urged shareholders this month to reinstate Musk’s $56 billion pay plan, which a Delaware judge had earlier this year rejected. At the time, it also requested that the company’s headquarters be moved to Texas.

Tesla | AP News Image

Group Of Tesla Shareholders Ask Investors To Vote Against Musk’s Compensation Package

Stockholders will vote on the measures at the June 13 annual meeting.

In a statement to shareholders published in a regulatory filing last month, Chairperson Robyn Denholm stated that Musk has delivered on the automaker’s growth expectations. Tesla meets all of the stock value and operational benchmarks outlined in the 2018 shareholder package. Shares have been up 571% since the pay package began

“Because the Delaware Court second-guessed your decision, Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years that has helped to generate significant growth and stockholder value,” Denholm stated in a letter. “That strikes us — and the many stockholders from whom we already have heard — as fundamentally unfair, and inconsistent with the will of the stockholders who voted for it.”

Tesla reported record deliveries of more than 1.8 million electric vehicles worldwide in 2023, but the value of its stock has fallen sharply this year as EV sales have slowed.

The business said it shipped 386,810 automobiles from January to March, about 9% fewer than last year. Future growth is still being determined, and convincing shareholders to support a large pay package in a growing global competition may be difficult.

Tesla | Tesmian Image

Group Of Tesla Shareholders Ask Investors To Vote Against Musk’s Compensation Package

Last year, Tesla reduced the costs of some models by up to $20,000. The price decreases caused the prices of used electric vehicles to fall, reducing Tesla’s profit margins.

In April, Tesla said it laid off around 10% of its workforce, or 14,000 individuals

SOURCE – (AP)

CANNES, France — The Cannes Film Festival honored Studio Ghibli, the Japanese cartoon factory of surreal ecological wonders that has captivated moviegoers for 39 years, with tales of Totoros, enchanted jellyfish, and floating castles, on Monday with an honorary Palme d’Or.

In the 22 years that Cannes has given out honorary Palmes, Ghibli’s prize was the first for anything other than an individual filmmaker or actor. (This year’s other winners include George Lucas and Meryl Streep.) Hayao Miyazaki, the 83-year-old animation genius who co-founded Studio Ghibli with Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki in 1985, did not attend the ceremony but spoke via video message from Japan.

Studio Ghibli | AP News Image

Studio Ghibli Takes A Bow At Cannes With An Honorary Palme D’Or

“I don’t understand any of this,” Miyazaki replied. “But thank you.”

At Cannes, where standing ovations may last for hours, Ghibli’s envoys — Goro Miyazaki (son of Hayao) and Kenichi Yoda — received one of the festival’s most thunderous responses. Thierry Fremaux, Cannes’ creative director, walked across the platform of the Grand Théâtre Lumière to shoot the extended ovation, which he stated will be sent to Miyazaki via video.

“With this Palme d’Or, we’d like to thank you for all the magic you’ve brought to cinema,” said Iris Knobloch, the festival’s president, who presented the award.

Studio Ghibli | AP News Image

Studio Ghibli Takes A Bow At Cannes With An Honorary Palme D’Or

The occasion was honored not with a new Ghibli picture but by four previously unreleased short films outside of Japan. “Mei and the Baby Cat Bus,” a minor sequel to Miyazaki’s 1989 film “My Neighbor Totoro,” grows the Cat Bus from that classic to a full fleet of cat conveyances, most notably the small Baby Cat Bus

The films were all created for the Studio Ghibli Museum outside Tokyo, including “Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess,” a culinary-themed desert for Miyazaki’s 2001 film “Spirited Away.” The other two—”House Hunting” and “Boro the Caterpillar”—create acoustic mini-adventures for forest critters.

Miyazaki’s long-awaited “The Boy and the Heron” won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in March, so the Studio Ghibli party came soon after. (A documentary on its making, “Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron,” was also shown at Cannes.)

Studio Ghibli | AP News Image

Studio Ghibli Takes A Bow At Cannes With An Honorary Palme D’Or

Miyazaki also sat out at the ceremony. Goro Miyazaki, whose own films include “From Up on Poppy Hill” and “Tales From Earthsea,” revealed that they had to wrap the Oscar in a hotel towel before bringing it home to his father. On Monday, he was relieved that the Cannes prize is portable.

“I’m reassured seeing the Palme d’Or was in a box,” he remarked, smiling.

SOURCE – (AP)

NEW YORK — After some users claimed that one of OpenAI’s ChatGPT voices resembled Scarlett Johansson—who was well-known for lending her voice to a fictional, and at the time futuristic, AI assistant in the 2013 movie “Her”—the company said it intends to stop using the voice.

OpenAI posted on the social media site X Monday that it is “working to pause” Sky, one of the five voices that ChatGPT users can select from. The business claimed to have “heard questions” and wanted to respond regarding how it chooses the realistic audio options for Sky, its main artificial intelligence chatbot.

In a companion blog post explaining the selection process for ChatGPT’s voices, OpenAI also quickly refuted the rumors circulating on the internet about Johansson.

ChatGPT | AP News Image

Is That ‘Her’? OpenAI Pauses A ChatGPT Voice After Some Say It Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson

“Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice,” the business stated. “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice.” It said that for privacy concerns, it could not provide the names of its voice performers.

Based in San Francisco, OpenAI remained silent about the reasons it continued to choose to suspend Sky’s use.

In September, OpenAI initially released ChatGPT’s speech capabilities, featuring all five voices and letting users converse with the AI assistant. Previously exclusive to premium customers, “Voice Mode” will now be free for all mobile app users, according to OpenAI’s announcement in November.

Additionally, ChatGPT’s interactions are becoming increasingly complex. Last week, the most recent version of OpenAI’s generative AI model was believed to be able to identify people’s moods and even imitate human cadences in spoken responses.

CHatGPT | AP News Image

Is That ‘Her’? OpenAI Pauses A ChatGPT Voice After Some Say It Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson

The most recent model, GPT-4o, according to OpenAI, is faster than earlier iterations and has real-time reasoning capabilities for text, audio, and video. During a demonstration during OpenAI’s May 13 unveiling, the AI bot conversed in real time and responded to requests for “more drama” and other emotions in its voice. It also attempted to infer an individual’s emotional state from a selfie video of their face, provided assistance with language translations, solved math problems step-by-step, and more.

The abbreviation “omni,” GPT-4o, isn’t yet generally accessible. Over the next few weeks and months, it will gradually become available to a restricted group. The model’s text and picture features are already starting to be made available, even to ChatGPT’s free users. However, the new voice mode will only be accessible to ChatGPT Plus members who have paid for it.

The capabilities of these recently revealed features have prompted even more comparisons to Spike Jonze’s dystopian romance “Her,” which centers on an introverted man (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in love with an AI-operating system (Johansson), leading to several complications. However, most people still need to have a chance to use these features.

On the day of GPT-4o’s announcement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also seemed to take advantage of this, merely publishing the term “her” on the social media platform X.

Many people who saw the model’s presentations last week also noticed that certain exchanges had an oddly flirty tone. A female-voiced ChatGPT commends an employee in one video that OpenAI aired for “rocking an OpenAI hoodie,” In another, the chatbot responds to praise by saying, “Oh stop it, you’re making me blush.”

ChatGPT | Business Insider Image

Is That ‘Her’? OpenAI Pauses A ChatGPT Voice After Some Say It Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson

This has generated discussion about the gendered approaches critics claim tech corporations have long employed to create and interact with voice assistants—a practice that predates the most recent wave of generative AI, which enhanced the capabilities of AI chatbots. 2019 saw the “hardwired subservience” inherent in default female-voiced assistants (such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa), even in the face of sexist taunts and abuse, according to the UN culture and science body.

In a story this week, Desi Lydic, senior correspondent for The Daily Show, remarked of GPT-4o, “This is clearly programmed to feed dudes’ egos.” “It’s obvious that a man created this technology.”

SOURCE – (AP)