{"id":498800,"date":"2026-05-23T08:43:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T08:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/498800\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T08:43:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T08:43:34","slug":"southeast-asia-is-chasing-the-ai-boom-but-at-what-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/498800\/","title":{"rendered":"Southeast Asia is chasing the AI boom, but at what cost?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a swanky penthouse office outside Kuala Lumpur, tech firm Zetrix AI is putting a grand plan into motion to get 1 million people across Southeast Asia using its artificial intelligence<\/a> agent, Avatar, by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Designed as an autonomous alter ego, Avatar is adept at dealing with tasks ranging from the mundane, like filling out forms, to the particular, such as helping influencers reply to thousands of social media messages.<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal, according to the company\u2019s Gen Z<\/a> mastermind, is to have these Avatars deal autonomously with other AI agents for day-to-day tasks, requiring human input only for final decisions.<\/p>\n

Zetrix hopes that by moving fast it can seize market share in a space that grows more competitive by the day, if not the hour.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI will play a very fundamental role in our lives,\u201d said C.Z. Wong, the 23-year-old developer of Avatar and Zetrix\u2019s chief AI officer. \u201cRegardless of whether we want it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone has different forecasts, but personally \u2026 at the rate things are going, five years is my estimate for when AI becomes mainstream.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"KualaKuala Lumpur\u2019s skyline in Malaysia. International bank Standard Chartered has said AI will replace more than 7,000 back-office roles in India, Malaysia and Poland by 2030. Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a swanky penthouse office outside Kuala Lumpur, tech firm Zetrix AI is putting a grand plan into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,216903,311,289,290,73460,31165,216904,18,144876,1473,20288,19,30475,17,32503,6093,305,117884,307,82],"class_list":["post-498800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-anuar-husain","tag-apple","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-avatar","tag-barclays","tag-delta-electronics","tag-eire","tag-fluor","tag-grab","tag-hsbc","tag-ie","tag-international-labour-organization","tag-ireland","tag-kuala-lumpur","tag-malaysia","tag-microsoft","tag-mizuho","tag-openai","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116623009925648094","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}