Financial Secretary Paul Chan attended a ceremony today to witness a $200 million donation to the Hong Kong Generative AI Research & Development Center (HKGAI) under the InnoHK research clusters in support of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the city.

The goal of the donation is to establish a service platform to provide Hong Kong citizens with the chatbot service “HKChat” based on the locally developed large language model HKGAI V1.

During the ceremony, representatives of the Ng Teng Fong Charitable Foundation and Sino Group presented the cheque to Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Provost and Director of InnoHK HKGAI Prof Guo Yike.

Mr Chan expressed gratitude to the charitable foundation and Sino Group, saying that AI is in rapid development, redefining the core competitiveness of economies and reshaping the medium- to long-term landscape of the global economy.

He noted that in the third session of the 14th National People's Congress and the third session of the 14th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, Premier Li Qiang mentioned the need to continue advancing the "AI+" initiative in the Government Work Report.

The premier emphasised support for the extensive application of large-scale AI models, as well as the integration of digital technologies with the country’s manufacturing and market strengths, Mr Chan said.

By fostering closer collaboration among the Government and the industry, academia, research and investment sectors, accelerating the development of AI as a core industry of Hong Kong, the city can be developed into an international exchange and co-operation hub for the AI industry, he added.

InnoHK is a major government innovation and technology initiative to foster global research collaboration, having successfully formed collaborations with more than 30 world-renowned universities and research institutes, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University, Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge.

The HKGAI is one of the 30 research centres under InnoHK. Its aim is to establish Hong Kong's own AI foundational models and ecosystem.

It is developing a series of open-source foundational models to create technologies applicable to text and image generation, medical diagnosis, legal affairs and other applications.

The centre will also develop "HKChat", an AI chatbot that integrates local data, knowledge bases, and language requirements, supporting Cantonese, English and Putonghua.