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Microsoft Hong Kong says it will continue offer its AI services to eligible customers in the city. Photo: AFP
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Microsoft maintains AI services in Hong Kong, as OpenAI curbs API access from China

  • The US tech giant has been offering eligible Hong Kong customers access to OpenAI tools such as ChatGPT since last year
Artificial intelligence
Xinmei Shen
Xinmei Shen
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Microsoft said it would continue to allow customers in Hong Kong to use OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) models through its Azure cloud computing platform, after the start-up announced it was moving to restrict access to its services from unsupported regions such as mainland China and Hong Kong.

“There has been no change to our Azure OpenAI service offerings in Hong Kong,” Microsoft’s local office said in a statement to the South China Morning Post on Thursday. “We continue to provide access to eligible customers in Hong Kong, via models deployed in regions outside Hong Kong.”

“As an independent company, OpenAI makes its own decisions,” Microsoft added.

OpenAI, which counts Microsoft as its biggest investor, earlier this week sent a notice to developers in “unsupported countries and territories”, which include mainland China and Hong Kong. The firm said it would take “additional measures” to block attempts from those regions to access its AI models via application programming interfaces (APIs), starting July 9.

An API is software that allows two computer programs to communicate with each other.

OpenAI’s services, which have been introduced in over 188 countries and regions, are officially unavailable in mainland China and Hong Kong, where users often access popular models such as ChatGPT through virtual private networks or third-party apps, while developers turn to proxies and outbound servers to bypass restrictions.

The San Francisco-based start-up did not elaborate on the reasons behind its latest move, which comes as the US government is ramping up efforts to cut off China’s access to advanced AI technology, citing national security concerns.

Besides sweeping export curbs on advanced chips, Washington is also looking into ways to limit China’s use of computing power offered by US cloud providers to train AI models and support related applications.

Microsoft launched enterprise support for OpenAI models in Hong Kong in March last year, allowing developers to apply for access to a range of systems including GPT-3.5, ChatGPT, Codex and DALL-E 2.

On the mainland, authorities have approved 117 home-grown large language models – the technology behind ChatGPT and other generative AI services – for public release. Industry insiders and analysts have said OpenAI’s service ban on China-based developers is set to push users towards domestic platforms.

Beijing-based Zhipu AI, considered one of the country’s top OpenAI alternatives, announced a “special house-moving plan” to help China-based OpenAI users “easily switch to home-grown [LLMs]”, according to a post published on its WeChat account.

Other start-ups such as Baichuan and 01.ai, as well as Big Tech companies like Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu, are also dangling perks ranging from steep discounts to freebies to draw developers affected by OpenAI’s new measures.

Alibaba owns the Post.

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