Innovation and technology chief Sun Dong said on Friday that the government plans to set up a task force to look into the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT to prepare for the challenges it could bring.

The chatbot is currently not officially available in the SAR, but people have been using virtual private networks to access the application, which can generate responses and content on a wide range of topics if it is given a set of parameters.

Sun said ChatGPT is a groundbreaking technology that can profoundly affect everyone.

"Many members of the public have already been in touch with ChatGPT, and the government has paid close attention to that. We plan to set up a ChatGPT task force to meet those challenges as they arise," he said.

The University of Hong Kong last Friday officially banned students from using ChatGPT to complete their coursework, saying any suspected violations may be treated as plagiarism.

Meanwhile, the technology chief also said Hong Kong has a unique edge, under "One Country, Two Systems", to bring worldwide data together through the proposed artificial intelligence super-computing centre.

“We want to introduce data from all over the world to Hong Kong. On certain premises, we also want to export mainland data to Hong Kong."

"Because of Hong Kong's unique advantage under One Country, Two Systems, Hong Kong will be one of the best data centres in the world," Sun said.

He added there is currently no plan for Hong Kong data to be sent north.