Hong Kong’s first locally developed artificial intelligence chatbot, HKChat, has raised expectations that it could compete with more popular and established AI apps, as it racked up around 90,000 users in the city within a week of its low-key release.
HKChat is focused on providing information on local services, including real-time bus arrivals, as well as the city’s weather, laws and regulations. It was the top-ranked free app on Apple’s Hong Kong App Store on Sunday, according to data from app analyst firm Sensor Tower.
Released by the Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Centre (HKGAI) a week ago, HKChat had added more than 8,000 users per day for the past two days, according to the centre’s director, Guo Yike, in an interview on Wednesday.
“Our goal is to provide Hong Kong residents with a good AI assistant,” said Guo, who serves as provost at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and chair professor at its Department of Computer Science and Engineering. “I think this might be the first such initiative anywhere in the world.”
HKChat supports Cantonese, Mandarin and English. It was developed using HKGAI V1, a large language model (LLM) that the lab built on China’s open-source DeepSeek models, according to the initiative’s announcement in February.
The initiative reflected the Hong Kong government’s efforts to reinvent the city as a technology hub.
In his policy address in September, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu unveiled a sweeping plan to embed AI in at least 200 administrative procedures by the end of 2027 to boost efficiency and create a more responsive, tech-driven bureaucracy.
That would result in AI tools being deployed across 100 different procedures within 2026 alone, covering areas from data analysis and customer service to expediting the approval of licences and permits.
HKGAI’s Guo said the centre was already working with local brokerage Futu Holdings to integrate its platform with financial information, including data from the city’s stock market. Testing of that function had already started, he added.
Still, the high cost of maintaining a free-to-use platform poses challenges, according to Guo.
He said HKGAI V1 LLM’s use of a multi-turn search method demands a high amount of computing power, which was “very expensive” and a resource that the lab did not have enough of. HKGAI V1 was trained using Nvidia’s H800 AI chips.
While the centre has made arrangements for its system to use domestic computing power solutions, these were “equally expensive”, according to Guo.
Since HKChat’s release, Guo said the most common complaint received was the app’s slow response time, which was partly because of HKGAI’s efforts to generate accurate answers and the high cost of computing power.
Established in October 2023 by HKUST in collaboration with four other tertiary educational institutions, the HKGAI is funded by the government’s InnoHK innovation programme.
Guo said the centre would rely on donations moving forward.
HKGAI, however, had no plans to charge users for HKChat, despite the financial pressure in its operations, according to Guo.
Once HKChat’s performance stabilised, the centre would consider providing its LLM to enterprises via application programming interface, he said.
HKGAI was one of the main initiatives launched by Hong Kong authorities as part of efforts to transform the city into a technology hub.
The estimated cost of HKGAI’s research and development and other operating expenditures was around HK$235mil (US$30.2mil), according to Sun Dong, the city’s Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry, in a statement the government published in April. – South China Morning Post
