SenseTime (0020) will open the Cantonese version of its ChatGPT-like product SenseChat to Hong Kong users for free on July 1, aiming to dominate the local market ahead of the other artificial intelligence companies.
The public can access both the website and the mobile application of the Cantonese version for various functions, including analyzing documents, pictures, coding and voice conversations starting July.
The Hong Kong-headquartered AI company also priced the application programming interfaces - usually for business use - at HK$30 per million tokens, which the firm said is the cheapest in the market.
It comes as mainland tech giants such as Baidu (9888) and Alibaba (9988) have intensified the price wars for Chinese AI large language models.
But SenseTime Hong Kong managing director Lewis Fung said the falling prices will have a limited impact on its goal to swing to a net profit in two years, as the revenue from retail users only accounts for a small part.
It is now more important for AI service providers to seize the market share ahead of other rivals, said Fung.
On the other hand, Fung said SenseTime cares more about its contribution to Hong Kong, where the company was established in 2014 and listed in 2021. Currently, people in the city need to use a virtual private network to reach OpenAI's ChatGPT, while most Chinese AI LLMs use Mandarin.
SenseTime also sees huge demand from enterprises. Fung added that the company has been in talks with various sectors including finance, medical, and construction as well as government departments for business cooperation, most of which prefer the customized LLM placed on their own computers or servers.
Therefore, Fung thinks the LLM sector will keep growing fast rather than entering the consolidation stage which usually features price wars. But he added that education is first needed as most businesses are unfamiliar with the emerging tool.
Compared with the huge omniscient LLMs, Fung predicted that the smaller AI chatbots, in particular the industry-based ones, will be the trend, as they are cheaper to develop.
SenseChat’s Cantonese version still needs improvements. In the on-site random tests, some simplified Chinese characters were found among the traditional and the image segmentation failed.
Fung promised that the team would keep improving the LLM before the official launch, but he stressed that the current levels of SenseChat in Cantonese have outperformed the US giant OpenAI's ChatGPT.
In a video shown at the launch ceremony yesterday, SenseChat went one up on ChatGPT as it offered its take on the controversial marriage of a 76-year-old man surnamed Ho to a 46-year-old mainland wife that set social media ablaze in the city recently, while its American rival said that it hadn't heard any news about the odd couple.
When asked about the possibility of building a local AI data center, Fung said SenseTime is also considering working with local partners or allocating some computing resources from the mainland to Hong Kong, as electricity and talent required for AI training are very expensive in the city.
Lewis Fung unveils SenseChat, which got the better of ChatGPT when it came to local gossip. Sing Tao
