Wen emphasised the system’s business benefit, saying: “Fano Labs’ online customer service chatbot AccoBot and AI synthetic voice FocoTalk are solutions designed to help enterprises save cost and automate business applications. Compared with traditional customer service centre operations, the ASR technology developed by our company gives AccoBot the capability of detecting different languages, conducting multi‑turn dialogues, and assigning follow‑up tasks to competent staff. As such, enterprises can handle large volumes of customer enquiries and business deals in a fast and seamless manner.

“Moreover, our FocoTalk solution uses text‑to‑speech technology to create the desired synthetic voice for enterprises according to their liking. Simply put, all the enterprises have to do is choose a preferred voice and the voicebot can then interact with customers on phone calls using that voice, with natural intonation mimicking human speech. These solutions can not only do away with the repetitive work in manual customer service and save human resources, but also greatly increase operational efficiency.”

Facilitating financial sales compliance

In an effort to ensure steady operation in the local financial market and strengthen Hong Kong’s position as an international financial centre, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong exercise stringent supervision over banks and financial institutions and have formulated a number of guidelines and codes of conduct, such as the Securities and Futures Ordinance.

In light of this, banks and financial institutions in general have internal compliance and risk control departments responsible for monitoring telephone conversations between sales staff and customers. They also conduct due diligence investigations, such as whether or not the staff have conducted risk assessments with and disclosed risks to customers, and whether there are any mis‑selling or misleading sales practices. It is worth noting that the cost of carrying out such monitoring is very high, and that any mistakes could lead to misconduct on the part of the bank or financial institution, resulting in huge fines and legal proceedings.

Wen described how his company has helped reduce this risk exposure for financial sector clients, saying: “Since its establishment, Fano Labs has been developing interaction analytics solutions for large banks and financial institutions in Hong Kong to monitor sales and transactions, as well as transcribe conversations with customers for compliance checking. In 2022, Fano Labs was appointed speech‑to‑text solutions supplier by the HKMA.

“In the past, it took the compliance and risk control departments of companies hours on end to screen voice messages by manual monitoring. But today, Fano Labs’ speech analytics system Callinter can automatically transcribe and analyse speeches 24 hours a day, mark any behaviour that may constitute misconduct, and notify the compliance department. By using our fully automatic monitoring system, businesses can promptly take remedial actions and formulate the necessary measures to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents, thus lowering business risk.”

The use case of smart speech analytics system Callinter.

Tapping into the China market

Fano Labs expanded into the mainland market in 2017 by setting up a branch in Shenzhen to provide language AI services to multinational corporations wishing to enter the China market. Wen said: “According to China’s 14th Five-Year Plan and Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Hong Kong plays an important role in the country’s development blueprint and serves as a super‑connector, bridging the mainland and global markets. In recent years, we have noticed that many multinational companies have set up Asia‑Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong and have also chosen the SAR as the springboard to tap into the Greater Bay Area (GBA) market.

“However, their entry into the GBA is often met with difficulties, such as the language barrier and cultural disparities. In this respect, Fano Labs, with its high‑performance multilingual technologies and sizeable samples of various languages, dialects and accents collected in Hong Kong over the years, can help these multinationals tackle the problems encountered in the course of developing the GBA market.”

According to a report projecting and analysing the size of the global and China language AI markets in 2023 issued by Shenzhen‑based Askci Corporation, China’s language AI industry is well developed and its market size continues to expand, surging from RMB30.1 billion in 2021 to RMB38.2 billion in 2023. In such a booming market, Wen explained how his company is able to stay competitive, saying: “Unlike the majority of language AI suppliers on the mainland, we possess state‑of‑the‑art technologies and strong R&D capability, we are rooted in Hong Kong where Chinese and Western cultures meet, and we have in place a rich pool of reference data of multiple languages, which enables us to serve markets of all sizes. As such, we can provide a diversity of language solutions for clients all over the world.”

Takeaways for Hong Kong businesses

AI has been thriving in mainland China, where the central government has implemented policies including the 14th Five-Year Plan for the development of a robotics industry (Chinese only) and a directive on accelerating scenario innovation and promoting ‘high-quality’ economic development with high-level application of artificial intelligence (Chinese only) to vigorously advance AI industry growth. In Hong Kong, the SAR government has also introduced a number of support policies aimed at accelerating the pace of technology innovation and fostering talent in the AI sector. Wen viewed this support as playing an important role, saying: “The government is vital to the success or failure of high technology development in a society. In the last few years, it is evident that the SAR government has been sparing no efforts in encouraging AI development. For instance, in a bid to enhance Hong Kong’s competitiveness in AI and quantum technology, the Financial Secretary has not only earmarked HK$3 billion in the 2023‑24 Budget for the development of this sector, but has also put forward plans for building an AI supercomputing centre.

“In 2021, Fano Labs won the InvestHK Global Fast Track finals and attracted many investors. This award has generated a host of opportunities for our company to expand business.”

Looking to the future, Hong Kong can be expected to continue to leverage its advantage in innovation and technology and ride the momentum of the mainland’s digital economy to further accelerate the pace of industrial digital transformation.