Shares of Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime surged as much as 11 percent on Tuesday, a day after it unveiled a series of new AI-powered products as it joins a global race to dominate the sector, but were down nearly one percent at the close.

SenseTime's shares rose to as high as HK$3.70 in morning trade on the Hang Seng Index, up 11.1 percent from its previous close but below its initial public offering price of HK$3.85 in December 2021. Its shares closed at HK$3.30.

Alibaba and Japan's Softbank are both invested in the AI company. Alibaba's shares rose as much as 3.8 percent, while Softbank climbed 0.5 percent.

On Monday, SenseTime CEO and co-founder Xu Li showed a live demonstration of the chatbot they called "SenseChat" writing an email and telling a story about a cat catching a fish when prompted by questions, as well as scripting computer codes.

The products were based off the latest version of the company's SenseNova big model, which they have been developing over the past five years, SenseTime's other co-founder Wang Xiaogang said. Big models are typically trained on massive datasets using powerful hardware.

In addition to SenseChat, the company also showcased an image generator, a digital avatar creation platform and a pair of complementary 3D modelling tools at the event. (Additional reporting by Reuters)
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Last updated: 2023-04-11 HKT 16:30