Hong Kong's finance and technology ministers on Monday welcomed a HK$200 million donation by property developers to support the city’s generative artificial intelligence development.

The fund will be used to support the Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Centre (HKGAI), and to develop an app for the recently launched HKGAI V1, the SAR's first locally developed generative AI tool.

Speaking at a press event during which the donation provided by the Ng Teng Fong Charitable Foundation and Sino Group was announced, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said Hong Kong must grasp opportunities brought by AI.

"The donation will support the establishment of a service platform for the InnoHK Research Clusters to provide services for residents based on the locally-produced large [AI] model, HKGAI," he told reporters.

"I look forward to the further development of the model, to extend the platform to cover more application scenarios, so that the services will be more diversified and benefit more local residents," Chan added.

Hong Kong launched the HKGAI V1 large model about two weeks ago. It powers a chatbot called HKChat which is capable of answering users' questions on topics ranging from the SAR's government structure to cinema schedules.

Speaking at the same event, the Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry, Sun Dong, added that the funds will help make the service platform more market-driven, and help the centre hire more staff.

"When you try to run a service system to the general public, you must have enough resources to support this platform, including human power as well as computing power, I think this is the main purpose of this donation," he said.

"I also hope the new version, or the mobile version of the large language model of HKGAI will be able to serve Hong Kong people as soon as possible, hopefully in the next several months."

Separately, Sun dismissed concerns that the latest reduction in government spending announced in last month’s budget will affect research and innovation in technology.

He said authorities will support those developments in a more targeted way.