HK-style ChatGPT to cover all govt departments, says HK tech chief

Hong Kong is planning to adopt the locally developed ChatGPT across all its government departments and make it available to the general public, according to the city's innovation and tech chief.

This comes after OpenAI’s AI platform ChatGPT has been fully blocked from users in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau since last Tuesday (9 April ). Using virtual private networks (VPNs) to access ChatGPT has also been prohibited.

Speaking on RTHK’s programme 星期六問責, Sun Dong, secretary for innovation, technology and industry, said the Innovation and Technology Bureau has been trialing the locally developed ChatGPT to find bugs and give feedback since last month.

Named “公務員文書輔助應用程式”, the AI system has been primarily developed for official clerical use. It can also understand complex prompts and generate humanlike responses. 

The overall process of adopting the system has remained smooth, Sun said. “As we continue to use and train this system, the AI model will continue to improve and become more capable over time."

According to Sun, the plan is to gradually expand its deployment across other policy bureaus, with the aim of deploying it across all government departments by the end of this year. “We will eventually make this AI writing assistant available to the general public in Hong Kong."

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Speaking of AI development, Sun said the Artificial Intelligence Supercomputing Centre (人工智能超算中心) in Cyberport, which is expected to begin operations as soon as this year, will consider the pricing models used in other regions before finalising its own fee structure.

Meanwhile, the fees charged by the centre may be slightly higher than that those in the Mainland. The remaining costs and expenses will be subsidised by the government.

The government has allocated HK$3 billion this year to support the development of the local AI ecosystem, hoping to provide support to the sector through the centre.

On the other hand, Sun said the the government has considered establishing a data security law and has initiated some preliminary work for the legislative process. However, he emphasised that the process will be relatively long and complex, and cannot be rushed. The authorities are referencing the relevant laws and regulations in other regions.

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