news

produced by huxiu technology group

author | wang qin

editor | miao zhengqing

header image | visual china

at the southern tip of the asian continent, the winds from the central and western continents hit this island. this tiny floating island is naturally not suitable for the real economy, but for the virtual economy, for all information, culture and financial exchanges without the real economy. here, ai has shed the burden of burning money and cards and replaced it with the light clothing of entertainment.

when i first learned that i was going to hong kong to attend an ai-related conference, my first reaction was: is there ai in hong kong?

after all, there are not many large model companies in hong kong at present. the ones that can be found include: the hong kong generative artificial intelligence r&d center jointly founded by several universities, and weitu ai founded by a returnee doctor.

training large models is expensive and requires computing power. people in the industry often say that if you don’t have thousands of cards, you’d be embarrassed to say you’re working on large models. when internet giants buy nvidia gpus, they often spend hundreds of thousands of chips and billions of dollars.

ai is more likely to take root in places with vast land and more financially strong technology and internet companies, rather than in hong kong, where every inch of land is valuable.

but when i actually got there, i realized,infrastructure is not hong kong's strong point, but it can develop culture and entertainment.。

rather than saying this conference is about the ai ​​industry, it is more about entertainment + ai. it is more about discussing the use of ai in music, images, vr, and how ai has changed our content ecosystem.

adding ai to the entertainment industry does not require the money spent on ai infrastructure. instead, ai can reduce costs and increase efficiency, and directly generate profits in application scenarios, which is easy and efficient.

needless to say, hong kong's concert industry is booming. most children of the genz generation have had the experience of going to hong kong to attend concerts. according to statistics from the hong kong special administrative region government, in 2023, an average of about two internationally renowned singers held large-scale concerts with more than 10,000 audiences per month, and most of them held more than one concert.

hong kong is often the first choice for european, american, japanese and korean pop stars to hold concerts in china, such as coldplay, conan gray, utada hikaru, and many more.

ultra music festival in hong kong

electronic music originated in europe and america. ultra music festival was held in miami, florida and other american cities in previous years. this year, it landed in hong kong for the first time, which was also due to hong kong's natural ability to connect the east and the west. many tourists came from various cities in east asia, and some took a flight of more than ten hours to come from america.

on september 14, the day of the performance, even though the show had already started for several hours (the performance lasted from noon to evening), some posts on the transfer of ultra tickets were still very popular on xianyu, with thirty to fifty people still marking "want" under one post.

marshmello, an american electronic music singer, is a leading singer in the electronic music industry with a signature comic-style headgear. he came to china for the first time through the ultra hong kong music festival. “i didn’t expect to hear the chinese fans singing ‘happier’ in unison, it was deafening.”

running a music festival is not an easy business: how to judge whether a singer can sell tickets, which tier of city to open it in, whether the cultural soil of the city matches, how to set prices, how to choose venues, how to manage audiences, how to deal with safety inspections and fire protection, etc., all require solid practical operational experience, and the cultural industry also has a certain amount of luck and willingness to accept defeat.

coincidentally, in my circle of friends, a friend who was watching ultra in hong kong posted a video of the light show at the electronic music festival. on the same day and at the same time, another friend who was watching a concert in another city happened to encounter the concert being cancelled due to force majeure on the way there. in the photo, the crowds on the street were so crowded that it was difficult to pass through. he said, "the subway can't breathe." i don't mean to drag down others, but this does show from the side that hong kong has accumulated a long period of experience in hosting cultural events.

scarlett li, the founder of zebra labs, the organizer of the ultra music festival, is also a veteran of music festivals. in 2008, li founded zebra media and has organized many large-scale music festivals in china, such as the zebra music festival and the electric daisy carnival.

li dai founded zebra labs in 2021, which combines the metaverse and ai virtual characters. li dai originally planned to retire, but founded zebra labs after her comeback. an investor said that no matter what new project li dai does after her comeback, he will invest because he trusts the founder. li dai used to hold music festivals in the mainland, and she made money from every one she held, and she could handle all the troublesome matters dealing with various parties.

electronic music and ai are also a clever combination. if folk music, which is heavy on vocals, is added with ai, it may make the audience feel "fake", but electronic music (edm, electronic dance music) has virtual and cyber elements since its birth, so adding ai music clips is appropriate.

at the ai ​​roundtable jointly organized by sounddynamics and zebra labs on september 13, electronic musician lona chen shared her methods of making music using ai tools such as ace studio, udio, and dance diffusion, and mentioned how ai music has silently changed people's music consumption habits: record companies began to purchase 15-second music clips generated by ai and distributed them in large quantities on tiktok to test whether they could become popular. if a certain clip became popular, they would invest money to produce the entire song.

hong kong, where east meets west, is good at interdisciplinary integration. at this ai roundtable, professor pan minglun of hong kong baptist university said that the interdisciplinary laboratory he leads spans several major disciplines, including film, music, visual arts, art technology, and business. on the spot, he demonstrated how to lead a team to guangxi to capture the dynamic dance of the yao people, and then use ai to generate virtual characters to dance.

the ai ​​exchange meeting jointly organized by sounddynamics and zebra labs was more like a party dinner and a gathering than a meeting.

most ai industry conferences in the mainland are business-like, with speeches being given at the top and people sitting and taking notes at the bottom. however, this exchange meeting was more artistic, with formal dresses and suits as the standard. what was even more eye-catching was that a musician wore a mix of golden dragon-patterned hanfu, a little black dress, and a cross necklace, which was a perfect match for hong kong, a city where east meets west.

the post-ai roundtable party will be held at soho house

this roundtable meeting was held at soho house in sheung wan, hong kong, an international private membership club. the lobby was filled with art and fashion magazines, the yellow light of retro lamps shone on the dim wooden furniture, and all kinds of fashionable people came and went. i met a white man in colorful clothes and double ponytails in the lobby. i said i like your vibe, and then he was as happy as a child. when the light in the elevator was too dim, you could hear the lady say "this is too daaaark" in a long london accent.

also for socializing, dinner parties in mainland china are often for a dozen people who do not know each other at the beginning to sit at a large round table for one or two hours, and after the meal, they are still strangers to most people. the space design of soho house is clever: five or six small round tables are not suitable for sitting and eating, but suitable for 2-4 people at each table to stand and chat, randomly bump into each other, get familiar with each other spontaneously, and then flow to the next round, giving people who do not know each other the opportunity to have one-on-one contact or small groups of three or four people as much as possible.

this is my third visit to soho house.

the first time was at a graduate school graduation party, which was also unexpectedly a dinner party. among my classmates, there was a senior new york times editor who returned to school at a time when he was close to retirement.

the second time was an event in hong kong last year. a group of couples from europe, america and australia were divided into more than a dozen tables and played a round-robin game like a buffet. there were sichuan mahjong, hong kong mahjong and taiwan mahjong. a local hong kong chinese man drew pictures on the spot to teach an italian gentleman how to play mahjong.

and this time, i watched a group of guests with east asian faces (mostly chinese) discussing ai in english, even though most of them could speak chinese.

this is not surprising in hong kong, china. after all, there are both us dollar fund investors and practitioners from the united states, switzerland, japan, south korea and other countries in the audience.

an investor told me that after us dollar funds reduced investment enthusiasm in the mainland market, many foreign investors wanted to invest in mainland ai companies but were unable to do so. as a result, some us dollar investors would operate in hong kong, china, and invest in mainland companies through hong kong companies.

in addition to the capital advantages created by the financial system, hong kong is geographically adjacent to shenzhen, and there is also a wave of scientific and technological talent flow. in august 2023, the planning of the hetao shenzhen-hong kong science and technology innovation cooperation zone was released. hetao is located in the lok ma chau area at the junction of hong kong and shenzhen, which facilitates the integration of scientific and technological talents in the two places. the park opened in june this year, and universities such as the chinese academy of sciences, the university of hong kong, and the hong kong university of science and technology have settled in.

moreover, hong kong, where every inch of land is valuable, also has its own ai infrastructure. currently, most of the data centers in hong kong are built for finance and virtual currencies. for example, the global switch data center in the tseung kwan o industrial estate covers an area of ​​about 70,000 square meters and is close to the hong kong stock exchange data center.

however, a family office person told me that a state-owned institution is negotiating to build a data center in hong kong science park for ai big model training. hong kong will soon have a data center for ai big models.

there are also institutions with state-owned backgrounds that are negotiating to build data centers in southeast asian countries such as thailand, malaysia, and cambodia. china can export and build power facilities, and "southeast asia is our back garden."

hong kong and singapore have one thing in common: both use super-powerful air conditioning to create a temperature indoors where people can wear suits and ties, creating an elite business atmosphere in this hot and humid area with wild banana leaves.

when indoor business ends, hong kong's nightlife begins. in many bars on hong kong island, the nightlife is so intense that the seats in the bars are full, the windows of the bars are full, and groups of young white europeans and americans gather on the narrow ramps typical of hong kong.

the elites in suits and ties in the super air-conditioned room were now immersed in the hot and humid sea breeze of hong kong. they had to take off their suits, put them on their arms, and drink ice from a glass in the other hand.

an investor joked about his life of traveling around the world with only one carry-on bag, flying around the world, and getting drunk every day in the office during the pandemic. a young man who was born in northeast asia, came to china as a child, studied in an international school, and lived in europe, has always been considerate in carrying backpacks and passing drinks to people around him. i asked him where he would feel at home, and he said no, and he was also confused about his identity.

in hong kong, china, even when talking about technology, it is often not so rigid, but more "flying". an old man wearing a floral shirt and of italian and american descent told me that his company focuses on tech meets fashion, producing fashion accessories in guangdong and then selling them to the united states.

hong kong’s encounter with ai is not a high-profile one, but rather as light as a feather.