Kuala lumpur: Linguistic relevance and user accessibility were critical in driving artificial intelligence (AI) adoption at the consumer level, particularly in a multilingual society like Malaysia, said HONOR Malaysia chief executive officer Ethan Chen. Stressing that relevance, accessibility, and ease of use were paramount, he said AI systems had to understand users' daily tasks across diverse languages without requiring consumers to possess specialised technical knowledge.
According to BERNAMA News Agency, Chen emphasized during a panel session titled Navigating Regional Strategy in a Shifting Global Order at M360 ASEAN 2026 that consumers should be able to use AI devices with ease and simplicity. He noted that greater openness and collaboration among device manufacturers, telecommunications operators, application developers, and AI platforms would help dismantle existing technological boundaries and provide consumers with a more comprehensive experience.
The panel session, moderated by Match-Maker Ventures Chief Executive Officer Nicolai Schaerrgen, also discussed wider regional integration. Panellists advocated a 'gotong-royong' (mutual cooperation) approach to develop ASEAN's AI ecosystem by pooling regional data, talent, and compute resources, rather than having individual nations attempt to build everything independently.
Meanwhile, AI Singapore Senior Director Leslie Teo highlighted the importance of a community-driven, open-source approach for Southeast Asia, which is home to about 1,200 languages alongside diverse cultures, histories, and socio-economic realities. He stressed that the concept of communities jointly developing technology is not new, with much of today's AI development benefiting from the global open-source movement.
Teo elaborated that AI Singapore is uniting a regional network comprising leading Southeast Asian language and natural language processing (NLP) groups, universities, and major American and Chinese technology companies to lay the groundwork for countries and enterprises to develop their own AI solutions. He emphasized the importance of an open-source ecosystem where everyone can build on each other's work to elevate the region's AI models.
NTT DOCOMO Vice-President Yoshio Umezawa added that regional AI collaboration needs to distinguish between data sovereignty and AI itself. He stressed the need for appropriate control of sensitive data while suggesting that AI models could potentially be shared more widely, as long as stability and governance are assured.
Umezawa pointed out that while economic scale favors shared regional AI foundations, telcos could anchor trust across the ecosystem by leveraging customer authentication and verified data. He mentioned that as an operator, they aim to provide provenance and authentication, contributing to the industry with strong data.
M360 ASEAN 2026, organized by the GSMA on Sept 9 and 10, brings together ministers, regulators, and industry leaders to discuss digital trust, artificial intelligence, resilient infrastructure, and regional digital integration. The event, held for the first time in the ASEAN region and in Malaysia, is endorsed by the Ministry of Communications, with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) as host partner.