HKUST Annual Report 2024-2025

39 L A B T O M A R K E T Release of Local Multimodal LLM Set to Enhance Hong Kong Productivity and Innovation The Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Center (HKGAI), led by HKUST under the Government of the HKSAR’s InnoHK R&D initiative, released its HKGAI V1 large language model (LLM) in early 2025. This represents the city’s most extensive local knowledge base for a multimodal LLM and its first locally developed generative AI model. Led by Provost Prof. GUO Yike and Prof. XUE Wei (Arts and Machine Creativity, Emerging Interdisciplinary Areas), the models support Cantonese, Putonghua and English, and are optimized for localized applications with a focus on safety and relevance. Civil servants are piloting applications like HKPilot, HKChat and HKMeeting, while HKUST has become the first local university to trial these foundation models, creating new educational opportunities.