(Yicai) May 31 -- SenseTime Group, a Chinese artificial intelligence developer, has launched SenseChat, a Cantonese version of its self-developed large language model SenseNova 5.0 released last month.

The Cantonese application programming interface is live, supporting a 128K context window and charging based on input and output volume with a fee of HKD30 (USD3.80) per 1 million tokens, SenseTime announced on May 29. SenseChat's website and app will be available for free starting July 1.

SenseChat supports requests in Cantonese and has LLM and multimodal capabilities, noted Lin Dahua, co-founder of SenseTime.

"After the release of the Chinese model in April, we began to plan for the Cantonese version," Zou Chunhui, vice president and head of strategy execution at SenseTime Asia Pacific, told Yicai. Technology companies have launched many LLMs, but they are mainly in Mandarin or English, with only a few non-major languages supported, Zou added.

As there are many Cantonese speakers and Hong Kong is a unique market that connects with overseas regions and the Chinese mainland, SenseTime aims to develop the Cantonese application market as a technology company based in Hong Kong, Zou pointed out.

In addition, since there are many Cantonese-speaking people around the world, SenseChat "will have the opportunity to enter other broader markets," according to Zou.

Compared with its competitors, SenseTime has the advantage of accurately understanding and mastering the Cantonese language as well as the culture and hotspots of the Cantonese-speaking region, Lin noted. The company was set up in 2014 at the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park by a team from the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Multimedia Lab, Lin added.

Amid fierce market competition, the success of AI-generated content comes from the deep cultivation of applications and the creation of a closed loop in the industry, said Xu Li, chairman and chief executive officer of SenseTime. Localizing apps requires LLMs to know and serve the culture, with continuous improvement in the supply of local information, culture, and life services, Xu noted.

On the day it launched SenseChat, SenseTime inked a deal with Deloitte China, Hong Kong Telecom, and GeelyIDC, a subsidiary of Geely Technology Group, to promote the practical utilization of the LLM in various service scenarios in Hong Kong, where Cantonese is the major dialect.

China Telecom also recently released an LLM that can understand over 30 dialects, including Cantonese and Shanghainese, and the dialects of Sichuan province, Wenzhou, and other major regions. The Chinese wireless carrier has piloted intelligent customer service using dialects at its branches in these areas.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev