China's generative AI frenzy sparks boom in app creation

Govt support, large user base help tech enterprises make everyone a developer’

- Lim Min Zhang

About a year ago, a group of China-based Tencent employees came together because of a common aspiration to enable everyone even those without knowledge of computer programming to create their own role-playing games.

The result of that shared ambition was the founding of the startup RPGGO, launched in February 2024, which provides a free platform for game creators with little to no coding experience, as well as players.

"We aim to democratise the creation of games," said Mr Zhang Lei, the start-up's founder.

The group of developers left gaming giant Tencent to work on the RPGGO platform, which is powered by generative artificial intelligence (AI).

The technology gained global attention via the public release in late 2022 of ChatGPT - the free-touse chatbot developed by the USbased OpenAl and which assists users in tasks such as writing emails, essays and computer code.

Already, "thousands" of game creators have used the platform, said Mr Zhang, whose 15 employees are based in China, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Games developed so far include one that allows a player to solve a murder mystery in the year 1903 in London.

On the back of a global boom in generative Al, enterprises and developers in China have surged ahead in finding new and practical ways to apply the technology.

These include tools for writing financial reports, grading high school essays and generating presentation slides.

Other applications allow the creation of product images and 30second video clips as promotional materials, with commercialisation potential a key driver of these uses, especially in e-commerce.

Behind generative AI apps are AI models, the core engines that do the intelligent work, analysing huge amounts of data to recognise patterns and make predictions. For example, a photo editing app might use one AI model to enhance image quality and another to apply artistic filters.