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Amid the rapid development of the global artificial intelligence industry, the US AI startup Anthropic officially announced on June 24 that it will open its first Asia-Pacific office in Tokyo this fall. This news undoubtedly injects new vitality into the AI ecosystem in Japan and the entire Asia-Pacific region. Founded in 2020, Anthropic is committed to developing AI technologies centered around human needs, with the philosophy of building safe and controllable AI systems to better serve society through technology. The company is leading in this field.

At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, numerous business and political leaders gathered, largely agreeing that US tech giants dominate the Artificial Intelligence (AI) landscape, with China and Asia seemingly lagging behind. However, in the wake of the event, this perception is being challenged. First, a previously unknown Chinese hedge fund, DeepSeek, has captured global attention. Its AI division has launched a large language model called R1,

Artificial intelligence is sweeping across the globe at an unprecedented speed, but a significant issue is becoming increasingly prominent: while general-purpose AI is proficient in many skills, it often struggles with specific regional cultures and languages. This is particularly true in culturally and linguistically diverse areas such as the Middle East and South Asia, where users urgently require AI models that understand the 'local language'. Although large general models can handle multiple languages, they often reveal a lack of cultural depth and in-depth regional knowledge when dealing with scenarios rich in regional context.

Recently, Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, may become one of Asia's top tech tycoons due to his success in the field of artificial intelligence. According to a survey by Bloomberg of several startup founders and AI experts, DeepSeek's valuation is expected to range from $10 billion to over $150 billion. This means that the 84% stake held by Liang Wenfeng could place him among the richest tech moguls in Asia. Image source note: Image generated by AI, image licensed by Midjourney in Boston.

Tencent Cloud announced a strategic partnership with the S.M.A.R.T Entrepreneurs Association in Singapore, aimed at accelerating the deployment of smart digital humans in the Southeast Asian market. The S.M.A.R.T Entrepreneurs Association focuses on assisting global entrepreneurs and senior management teams in building global intelligent enterprises, achieving business transformation and digital transition, and promoting mutually beneficial international business cooperation.

The T-MAC (Table-Lookup-based MAC) technology aims to address the memory and computational constraints of deploying large language models (LLMs) on edge devices. By quantizing model weights into low-bit representations, T-MAC replaces traditional multiplication operations with look-up tables (LUT), significantly enhancing running efficiency on CPUs. This method greatly reduces the memory required for calculations, enabling billion-parameter LLMs to run efficiently on resource-constrained devices for smart upgrades. Compared to existing implementations, T-

Meta is expected to release the open-source AI model Llama 3 in July this year. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg held talks. Zuckerberg visited Samsung and LG Electronics for collaboration discussions. In Japan, he met with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to discuss AI risks.

The Indian language model BharatGPT is set to launch in April, supporting 11 local Indian languages. This model is jointly developed by a company owned by Asia's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, in collaboration with eight Indian universities. BharatGPT aims to address the complex language system in India, covering fields such as healthcare and finance. Industry experts believe its release will mark a significant milestone in India's autonomous AI technology capabilities. Ambani has previously collaborated with companies like NVIDIA to co-develop India's language AI models.

By 2027, generative AI is expected to automate 30% of routine marketing tasks in the Asia Pacific region, reshaping the marketing landscape. Primary responsibilities will include search engine optimization, content and website optimization, and customer data analysis. By 2028, large enterprises in Asia Pacific will implement generative AI to automate 30% of consumer journey behaviors, covering the marketing to sales process. By 2026, more than half of consumers are expected to use generative AI for product and service discovery, evaluation, and purchasing decisions. This trend will change marketers' roles, emphasizing advanced skills such as storytelling.

Key trends in Asia-Pacific financial services for 2024 include digital transformation, payments, mortgages, generative AI, embedded finance, big tech and emerging technologies, and regulation. Colin Kum, Mambu's new Sales Director for Asia-Pacific markets, stated that generative AI will be a focal point of financial attention in 2024, particularly in enhancing customer experience. The Asia-Pacific financial services sector will be impacted by regulatory changes, with new digital banking licenses being issued in some regions and significant changes to cross-border payment regulations. The rise of generative AI in the banking sector is expected to become a key aspect of 2024.

Alibaba Group's research institution, DAMO Academy, has launched a large language model tailored specifically for Southeast Asian languages. The Southeast Asian LLM is pre-trained on datasets in Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai, Malay, Khmer, Lao, Tagalog, and Burmese, and outperforms other open-source models in language and safety tasks. The region is considered an important growth market for LLMs targeting specific areas. SeaLLM excels in non-Latin language tasks and demonstrates enhanced capabilities in understanding and processing non-Latin script text.

Singapore is investing $52 million to launch a national multimodal large language model initiative, filling the gap left by Western language models. In collaboration with IMDA, AI Singapore, and the Agency for Science, the project aims to introduce region-specific contextual models and enhance AI research capabilities. The initiative will nurture local AI talent, promote industry collaboration, and drive AI innovation in Southeast Asia. It is part of Singapore's Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 plan, which aims to position the country as a global hub for AI solutions by 2030.

SymphonyAI Sensa-NetReveal has introduced the Sensa Investigation Hub, the first high-impact AI-driven financial crime investigation and detection platform in the Asia-Pacific region. The Sensa Investigation Hub leverages advanced predictive and generative AI technologies, combined with leading global risk and compliance expertise, to provide a world-class investigation platform that can enhance investigator productivity by up to 70%. The platform integrates SymphonyAI's generative...

JPMorgan's analysis shows that Vietnam has a more promising long-term development outlook in the field of artificial intelligence. Compared to Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines are relatively lagging in AI development. The Vietnamese government actively supports technological innovation and the growth of the digital economy.

Forbes predicts that 2024 will be a year full of exploration and potential for the Asia-Pacific region, with generative artificial intelligence (genAI) at the heart of the innovation wave. 30% of Asia-Pacific companies will benefit from the transformative impact of genAI, facing challenges in work culture and data management. A quarter of Asia-Pacific B2B marketers will increase their customer engagement budgets to drive growth.

1. Lazada leverages the general capabilities of large models to address pain points in keyword searches and image searches for users in Southeast Asia. 2. Lazada enhances advertising and marketing efficiency for Southeast Asian merchants through the minimalist interaction and content generation capabilities of large models. 3. Lazada combines technology and business insights to create a competitive edge in the Southeast Asian e-commerce market.

{1: Microsoft Research Asia has proposed a method for industrial control using pre-trained large language models (LLM). 2: The research utilizes the GPT-4 model to control air conditioning systems, achieving results superior to traditional reinforcement learning methods with only a few example samples. 3: The goal of this research is to explore the potential of directly using pre-trained LLMs for industrial control tasks and to design methods for addressing industrial control tasks with lower technical debt.}