Chinese smartphone giant Oppo and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University have renewed a collaborative framework agreement, which involves the launch of a joint innovation research centre for artificial intelligence (AI) imaging technology in the city.
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Oppo last Friday pledged no less than 30 million yuan (US$4.2 million) in funding over the next five years to deepen collaborative efforts with PolyU on AI imaging technology, as well as for expanding the scale of co-training for PhD and postdoctoral researchers.
“The research centre’s primary goal is to [nurture] talent,” Zhang Lei, chair professor of computer vision and image analysis at PolyU’s department of computing, recently told the South China Morning Post.
The new centre – scaling up from a joint innovation lab set up two years ago – is expected to be operating by January next year. It aims to recruit around 25 doctoral researchers and several postdoctoral candidates over a five-year period. Their focus will cover computer vision, an area Zhang has been involved in over the past two decades, and extend to the broader research in generative AI (GenAI) technology.
GenAI refers to algorithms, such as ChatGPT, that can be used to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, simulations and videos.
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What sets apart the Oppo-funded joint AI centre from other local initiatives, according to Zhang, is its emphasis on nurturing talent versus regular corporate project-based research.