SenseTime eyes generative AI as revenue alternative to facial recognition

June 3, 2024

21 2 minutes read

Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime, known for its facial recognition technology, is zooming in on another source of income – generative AI.

SenseTime Co-founder and CEO Xu Li says that its generative AI business recorded almost a 200 percent year-on-year increase in revenue during 2023, amounting to US$163.4 million. The technology accounts for 34.8 percent of its total revenue and is expected to fuel growth in the coming years, even though the company is still losing money. Last year was the third consecutive year of losses since its listing in Hong Kong in 2021, The South China Morning Post reports.

“We set the goal for a 100 percent growth of our generative AI business this year,” Xu told the paper.

In April, the Hong Kong-headquartered company released the latest iteration of its large language model (LLM), SenseNova which the company compares to OpenAI’s GPT-Turbo model. Last week, the company released the Cantonese Large Language Model for its chatbot SenseChat tailored for Hong Kong.

Xu tells Bloomberg that the company has been working on AI computing capacity and infrastructure as it seeks to turn a profit within the next two years.

SenseTime has made its pivot amid an increasingly saturated facial recognition market in China and a U.S. investment ban. The company was added to the U.S. Commerce Department Entity List in 2019 for its alleged role in human rights abuses in China’s region of Xinjiang, stymying its growth in Western markets.

Among its generative AI clients are China-based Haitong Securities, China Telecom and China Merchants Bank. Last month, the company also made a move to the Southeast Asian market by clinching a deal with Malaysia’s largest telecommunications network OCK Group Berhad. SenseTime will be providing generative AI, biometric facial authentication, behavioral analytics, and smart city technology to the firm.

Changes are also coming to its leadership. SenseTime is expected to name Dr. Lin Dahua as its new executive director during its next annual meeting in late June. Lin is co-founder and has been chief scientist for the Group’s AI infrastructure and large model business since 2014. The move comes after the death of the billionaire founder of the AI company Tang Xiao’ou.

Despite these changes, the company does not seem to be abandoning its facial recognition business. SenseTime passed the iBeta’s Level 2 tests for biometric presentation attack detection (PAD) in March.