Chinese voice recognition giant iFlytek has launched a series of artificial intelligence (AI) products in Hong Kong, where its new international headquarters will support its global expansion, as the firm doubles down on a commitment to home-grown computing infrastructure amid tightened US chip restrictions.
iFlytek is making an upgraded international version of its Spark medical large language model (LLM) V2.5 available to organisations in Hong Kong, aiming to assist medical professionals in diagnosis and treatment, with language support for Cantonese and English. It has also launched a Hong Kong version of its healthcare chatbot app Xiaoyi for consumers in the city, the company said on Tuesday.
iFlytek also announced the Hong Kong roll-out of products including a smart blackboard for classrooms, and a meeting transcription and translation solution that lets users switch freely among Cantonese, Putonghua and English.
Hong Kong would be a launch pad for the company’s global expansion in the future, founder and chairman Liu Qingfeng said on Tuesday.
“Hong Kong is not merely a market for iFlytek,” Liu said. “It is instead our base for innovation and internationalisation.”
The city would play a major role in iFlytek’s medical AI efforts, as it offered English-language medical data, and the overseas training of some local doctors could help improve the capabilities of its medical LLM, Tao Xiaodong, president of iFlytek Healthcare, said.
