ChatGPT and AI booms in Vietnam

In the early days of 2023, ChatGPT released by OpenAI is becoming popular all over the world. ChatGPT is a chatbot providing solutions to complex problems directly like composing essays, coding, and drafting business proposals. Within a few seconds after entering keywords, ChatGPT will provide text, images, audio, and other entertainment media in excellent quality.

Just a few weeks after launching, this “super AI” has reached over 10 million users and has rapid growth. This success helps OpenAI negotiate an investment agreement worth $30 billion, more than double its valuation in 2021.

After investing $1 billion in ChatGPT in 2019, Microsoft is planning to invest another $10 billion in exchange for 49 per cent of OpenAI's stake. This tech giant is considering integrating ChatGPT into Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, and even the Bing search engine to compete for market share with Google Search.

Eric Boyd, CVP of AI Platform at Microsoft, said that a generative AI model like ChatGPT will change the way humans interact with computers.

"Talking to the computer will become as natural as human-to-human communication, and changing users' daily experience of technology," he said.

In the view of Ngo Huu Thong, co-founder of Uweb, ChatGPT is one of the smartest chatbots today that can synthesise information in a very short time from billions of data sources in most languages. Even for difficult and professional questions, ChatGPT can give valuable responses with similar content to articles on the Internet, and its answers feel like talking to a real person.

ChatGPT has made a big impact on other AI startups. For example, AI startup Jasper has raised $125 million at a $1.5 billion valuation; Stability AI mobilised $101 million at a $1 billion valuation. Other AI companies similar to ChatGPT at a smaller scale like Character.AI, Replika, and You.com are also attracting special attention from investors.

Vietnam is quite responsive to new technologies. Since 2020, when blockchain technology broke out, the country has become a "blockchain factory" that provided thousands of projects related to this technology. Therefore, with the explosion of ChatGPT, experts, and businesses expect to keep up with this wave.

Vietnam is currently ranked 55 out of 181 countries in applying AI. Vietnam currently has more than 70,000 digital businesses and AI have been actively and strongly applied in all aspects of life.

“FPT has integrated human-bot communication AI to handle boring, repetitive tasks. AI is a key technology of FPT and FPT will pour at least VND300 billion ($13 million) into this technology in the next three years,” said Vu Anh Tu, CTO of FPT Group.

Rikkei Digital has initially been managing core AI technology, so the company will invest more in AI applications, such as smart cameras and smart speakers.

"Besides this, robotics is an area that Rikkeisoft has invested in and researched since 2019. In the near future, Rikkeisoft will make practical applications thanks to robotic technology and apply in practical fields such as hotels, resorts, golf courses, and AI applications on e-vehicles," said Ngo Minh Quan, CEO of Rikkei Digital.

“The global AI market size is valued at $93.5 billion and is forecast to have a compound annual growth rate of 38.1 per cent in 2022-2030. Applying AI, Big Data over the world and in Vietnam has become a mandatory need of organisations and businesses to reduce costs, improve customer experience, and enhance business competitiveness," said Nguyen Nam Long, deputy general director of VNPT Group.

In early 2021, Vietnam issued the national strategy on AI research, development and application by 2030 that sets out the goal of enabling AI to be an important technology of Vietnam in the fourth industrial revolution, contributing to socioeconomic development and gradually turning Vietnam into a bright spot in research, development, and application of AI in the region and worldwide. The year 2023 is expected to be the year of the AI technology boom in Vietnam.

The ability of AI to help develop visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages results largely from the use of large databases that can be used to train AI algorithms to learn how to interpret new data that it encounters.

With digital transformation being an inevitable movement, partnering with insurtech companies is an effective way for insurance companies in Vietnam go faster and smarter in the digital race.