Skapa.ai, a social tech company, has announced it will launch another social network specifically for Generation Z at the end of February, called Leka. Instead of focusing on connection-based content recommendations, Leka will offer an app experience that reflects what users themselves like, with AI support. Previously, Skapa.ai also launched the Fika dating app, which also uses AI to meet unique needs.

AI wave set to sweep tech market, illustration photo/ Shutterstock

“The only way we can deliver the experience that our vision dreams of is through big data and AI. The recommendation algorithm is carefully crafted for a healthier social media world. It will allow our users to feel encouraged to post and not to be judged in ways that are ever so prevalent in current social media,” said the tech company’s co-founder and Oscar Xing Luo.

Skapa.ai is not alone in the journey to find opportunities and develop products from the AI technology platform, both in Vietnam and in the world.

The emergence of AI combined with big data has created a lot of added value and convenience for users and has been interested in development by many technology businesses around the world for many years.

According to research by International Data Corporation, governments and businesses around the world will invest up to $500 billion in AI technology in 2023. Recently, leading chipmakers Intel and AMD have both unveiled new hardware acceleration for AI-based software in their latest CPUs.

In Vietnam, the popularity of AI has come earlier than expected. The country currently has more than 70,000 digital businesses that have been applied in fields from finance, industry, smart cities, healthcare, insurance, smart agriculture, and environmental technology, and more, with the participation of leading groups in the field of technology.

FPT, a pioneer in digital transformation and the largest IT service provider in Vietnam, currently owns the FPT.AI platform, including more than 20 advanced services deployed in 15 countries with 11 million users and 200 million communicators. AI will continue to be FPT’s spearhead in the next three years, and this business is expected to invest at least VND300 billion ($13 million) to continue developing the ecosystem.

In the middle of last year, Viettel became the first player in Vietnam and one of five businesses in Southeast Asia to officially establish a strategic cooperation with NVIDIA, one of the largest corporations providing solutions for AI. NVIDIA’s solutions are being widely applied, with more than two-thirds of the world’s fastest supercomputers using this corporation’s technology.

Viettel will join NVIDIA’s global partner network, contributing to accelerating the speed of research and application in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, digital copy, and robotics.

Nguyen Dinh Chien, Viettel’s deputy general director said, “The strategic cooperation relationship between Viettel and NVIDIA will be the foundation for the development of the field in Vietnam and the region.”

The government AI Readiness Index 2022 report published by Oxford Insights in January shows that Vietnam ranks 55/181 globally and ranks six out of 10 in ASEAN, reflected in the use of AI to operate and provide services. Compared to last year’s results, Vietnam’s ranking has increased by seven places on the global AI readiness index, thanks to the strengths of a young population, high digital skills, and the ability to quickly adapt to new digital solutions.

Nguyen Minh Tu, Zalo’s technology director, said the wave of technology would change drastically day by day, and the AI race in Vietnam has just begun and will explode in the near future.

“If we do not make good use of the advantages and potential, we will be left behind, Vietnamese businesses may become outsiders in the future,” said Tu.

Phan Duc Trung - Vice president Vietnam Blockchain Association

In Vietnam, AI is one of the technology fields considered by the prime minister to be the foundation of Industry 4.0 and issued Decision No.127/QD-TTg in 2021 about national research, development, and application of AI by 2030. In a report by Oxford Insights, in 2021, Vietnam ranked 62nd out of 160 countries evaluated, up 14 places compared to with 2020. AI in Vietnam is being applied in many fields such as smart cities, healthcare, agriculture, and environment. During the past few years, many AI applications were developed for diagnosis and other pandemic issues. AI voice assistant is also a trend that is expected to explode in the near future. Blockchain and AI can combine and complement each other. Blockchain is considered a decentralised, tamper-proof, and transparent information storage ledger. Meanwhile, AI is a data processor under a centralised model, which develops quickly but lacks transparency in the output results. Right now, blockchain has scalability and performance problems, and AI has mixed opinions due to lack of transparency and copyright infringement. But these two technologies combined can solve the weakness of the other. Blockchain provides trust and privacy, while AI enhances efficiency and speed, particularly in the financial services industry. They eliminate barriers between multi-party transactions, accelerating transaction speed. AI automates manual processes and makes real-time decisions, while blockchain reduces transaction clearing time and costs. Also, AI can analyse customer data to make personalised investment recommendations, while blockchain can provide real-time access to account information and reduces transaction processing times. The ChatGPT founders, OpenAI, say it now has more than one million registered users. OpenAI is also the company behind the AI-based image generation platform Dall-E 2 and the automatic speech recognition system Whisper. In a period where the value of tech companies has plummeted 50-70 per cent, ChatGPT’s current doubled valuation is impressive, and OpenAI even received a commitment to invest $10 billion from Microsoft last month.

Denise Sandquist - CEO and co-founder Skapa.ai

Vietnam is currently ranked 55 out of 181 countries in applying AI, and has over 70,000 digital businesses. I believe that the products coming out of Vietnam have strong potential to be world-leading because we have the talent here and the government encourages digital innovation. For businesses applying it or startups like us developing apps, Vietnam definitely has what it takes in terms of human resources and ecosystem to become a base for leading AI companies. After the blockchain wave in Vietnam in 2020, the country has become a blockchain factory, and I will not be surprised if Vietnam catches the AI wave too. We are headquartered in Vietnam. Our first app Fika is a female-focused AI social and dating app. With Fika we are using AI to optimise around long-term relationships for users, while in other dating apps the algorithm optimises on “likes” and short-term relationships. For our new app Leka, we are building social networks with the help of AI, by helping people engage with others in communities based on interests. AI decides what content that will be pushed up, based on what the unique user is likely to engage with and content from who they are likely to build a meaningful relationship with. We have always wanted to combine building social networks with AI and individualisation, helping people to understand more about themselves, daring to be authentic, and finding and engaging with others based on who they are.

Nguyen Trung Thanh - Founder Trustkeys Network

AI is capable of rapidly evolving and unpredictable development, opening up a lot of potential. Previously, it only supported searching and sorting information, now this technology has reached the threshold of self-generating information and even suggesting users. In terms of technology and application development, I think that depending on the field, there will be many models for applying AI in practice. The financial sector over the years has used it to support forecasting, the more difficult challenge is to create a natural interaction between people and machines, but the introduction of software like ChatGPT has initially solved the problem. About six years ago, we studied a number of projects on AI, and some students participating in the project also developed AI-powered face recognition and for licence plate models. I think the next trend of technologies will be to combine different elements, such as the combination of AI and blockchain, to bring out new applications to solve real business problems in the field of securities or customer care and payment, in parallel with traditional solutions.