- Shanghai Binling Network Technology is actively expanding its online education offerings to include AI-driven language learning tools for multiple languages.
- Zhang outlines the company’s strategy to adopt advanced game engines and develop courses in emerging fields such as robotics and brain-computer interfaces.
- Zhang emphasises the transformative role of AI in game development, particularly in improving artwork and music composition to streamline the development process.
Shanghai Binling Network Technology specialises in game development, online education and artificial intelligence. The company was founded by Minxuan Zhang, who previously founded two companies in Hong Kong, Xing Yi and Shen Yan. About ten years ago, Zhang created his first game, “Lian Ying”, a romance adventure game that sparked his interest in game development.
This first project, combined with his participation in competitions such as the 66RPG Independent Game Development Contest, inspired him to explore the integration of AI into games. With a Ph.D., Zhang has used his extensive educational and professional background to push his company into new areas of technological innovation.
Motivation behind the founding of Shanghai Binling Network Technology
“I founded Shanghai Binling Network Technology after realising the challenges of relying solely on Hong Kong-based companies to operate in mainland China,” said Minxuan Zhang to BTW media.
He has been engaged in the practice of blogging about technology for a period of five years, and he began his first business venture over a decade ago. “By 2017 I was in a pretty unique position. I was between jobs at the time, so I grabbed the chance to turn my ongoing projects into this new venture,” Minxuan said.
Zhang added, “The sectors of game development, online education, and AI just made sense to me. My journey into game development began about ten years ago and led to the creation of my first game. Along with pursuing all my higher education online, these experiences have shaped my career really well.”
“The recent surge in AI technology has only further shown me that I’m on the right track, and that there’s a lot of potential in AI’s future applications.”
The integration of AI in game development
Zhang Minxuan is passionate about how AI isn’t just a helpful tool. “It’s fair to say that recent AI can be fully integrated into the entire development process, given how the game development process works. In our game development process, AI is no longer just a tool but a core component that enhances every aspect of game creation,” he said.
“For example, we can use AI to generate original artworks with Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, or even to create music with Suno and U-dio,” he said.
Zhang also expressed his belief that artificial intelligence and embodied robots were a force for good in the industry. He said: “chatgpt3 went online in 2022, and 2023 can be considered the first year of AI because Google launched the crucial transformer framework. Around 2017, I signed up for an offline course on AI at Shanghai Jiaotong University, and later put together a few sets of AI online video courses, which were mainly posted on my websites Netizen Academy and Bilibili.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on AI game industry trends recently and I’ve seen that there are now AI game engines out there, like buildbox4, which can generate game features with just one click,” he said. “Needless to say, there are benefits and drawbacks. These AI game engines are from different vendors, so you have to integrate them effectively and use them in your games.”
Also read: Which companies are at the forefront of AI development?
The role of AI in online education
Online education is also one of Binling Network Technology’s key businesses, and the company has been trying to combine AI with it. “After looking at current market conditions, we are actively expanding our AI capabilities to include language practice tools in our free online class.” Minxuan said.
It seems that there is only English AI accompanying training in China. So our tools will not not limited to English, we are developing similar AI-driven systems for languages such as Japanese, Korean and French.
Zhang Minxuan, the founder of Shanghai Binling Network Technology
“This expansion is aimed at broadening our educational reach and equipping students with the necessary tools to engage effectively in a multilingual environment,” he added.
Mr Zhang also mentioned that he’s been using Douyin (TikTok)’s AI tool Doubao to learn English. He said it’s a great way to practise speaking without having to pay for a foreign tutor.
Also read: Ex-OpenAI engineer launches AI-integrated education platform
Cross-industry synergies
Zhang Minxuan also shared his thoughts on how gaming and education are changing together. “It used to be that games and education didn’t go together. But things are starting to change. For instance, a lot of universities have set up game-related courses, such as animation design and digital media. There are also lots of platforms, such as Unity Online and Siki Academy that offer game development courses,” he said.
“I teach both AI and video game courses online. Recently, the game Black Myth – Goku came out, and I think it could lead to another wave of game development learning like World of Warcraft did. With the latest AI technology, I think we’ll see a lot of next-generation game development,” he said.
Ensuring compliance with ethical standards in AI applications
Maintaining ethical standards and compliance is important in AI applications. “Some of the material may be copyrighted and therefore not compliant (e.g. pornography). It’s probably best to stick to material from big platforms like Toast ART or Mile High Mile High(哩布哩布). If you sign up for the right membership, you can probably get approval for commercial use without watermarks. There’s now a one-click PPT for online education, which saves time and lets you change the content to match the AI-generated PPT, which can be used for lectures,” said Minxuan.
Future directions and advice for AI entrepreneurs
In the future, Binling Network Technology plans to acquire advanced game engines and templates, such as the Buildbox 4 AI engine, to focus on the development of AAA 3D games. In online education, it aims to introduce new courses not only in AI, but also in emerging fields such as robotics, brain-computer interfaces and smart hardware.
In addition, their recent in-house developments in AI, such as integrating AI with PowerPoint and music, will evolve into more multimodal applications, including AI-driven mind maps and AI 3D modelling.
Zhang finally offered valuable advice to aspiring AI entrepreneurs. He said that those entering the AI industry for the first time often focus on deep learning and reinforcement learning, as well as data annotation and he offered his insights.
I advise against starting from scratch with a large model because of the high cost of computing power. Instead, it can be more cost-effective to use open source models such as Llama3 and Zhishu for fine-tuning.
Zhang Minxuan, the founder of Shanghai Binling Network Technology
“There’s also potential in developing smaller, specialised models (SLM) for specific industries, which could eventually be integrated into embodied robots. For multimodal applications, connecting to readily available APIs such as Suno for music and Luma for video can enhance your product offering”.
Artificial intelligence, video games and online education are just some of the services that Shanghai Binling Network Technology offers. “We manage almost 20 industry-specific websites and we’re ready to take on new challenges like embodied robots and brain-computer interfaces,” he said.
