"Can blueberries grow on my land?" For many farmers, introducing a new crop is an appealing opportunity, but taking the risk on untested soil can be daunting.
Now, Landy AI, an agricultural large language model developed by a Chinese company, is helping more than one million farmers across China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) explore new possibilities lying beneath their feet.
By marking out the location of the farmland on a GPS map and entering the crop they want to grow, users can instantly get a report assessing the suitability of the candidate crop for the area and their potential returns.
This is only one of many functions supported by the model developed by JJR Science & Technology Group Co., Ltd., a smart agriculture company based in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
The model is among products displayed at the China-ASEAN Artificial Intelligence Application Cooperation Center in Nanning, the regional capital. The center was founded last year, when China-ASEAN bilateral trade exceeded 1 trillion U.S. dollars for the first time. Since then, the center has cataloged more than 1,000 potential AI scenarios, opened 279 to developers, set up offices in Vietnam, Laos, and Malaysia, backed more than 30 cross-border projects, and assembled an alliance of 55 companies.
Guangxi, a key gateway of China to ASEAN, is leveraging its geographical advantages, technological strengths and shared characteristics with ASEAN markets to develop AI solutions tailored to local needs and meet the region's growing demand for AI applications.
JJR is one example of a company embracing the AI trend. Established in 2008, it began developing Landy AI in 2024. Since then, the firm has collected a vast amount of data, which includes temperature, precipitation and sunlight across different areas, as well as characteristics, production processes and marketing strategies for various crops.
Together, they enable the model to support farmers' decision-making on pre-production investment, in-production technique and post-production sales.
Two years after its launch, Landy AI now supports six languages: Chinese, English, Lao, Thai, Khmer and Malay. The company has also developed an AI-powered orchard inspection system that can collect real-time weather, pest and soil data through different sensors, as well as an AI vision system that monitors crop growth and identifies risks from pests and diseases.
In Cambodia's Kampong Chhnang Province, JJR's AI helps arrange equipment, such as sprinkler and drip irrigation systems in vegetable greenhouses. In Pakse, Laos, more than 4,000 mu (about 267 hectares) of banana plantations are managed with greater precision through the company's new tech.
The popularity of AI agricultural applications in ASEAN markets is no coincidence. "Many Southeast Asian countries grow tropical crops such as bananas, dragon fruit and durian, which align well with Guangxi's planting strengths," said Lin Zhongda, head of the international business department at JJR. Guangxi alone produced nearly one-seventh of China's fruit in 2025.
Applied across more than 2 million mu of farmland in China and ASEAN countries, the company's smart agriculture solutions are expected to reduce labor costs by more than 20 percent, said Chen Xiujuan, director of JJR's management center. She added that the age of Landy AI's users ranges from 20 to 60, which aligns with the product's original purpose.
"Seasoned farmers are showing strong interest and demand for professional agricultural knowledge and AI assistants to help them grow new opportunities," Chen said. "Young people committed to rural revitalization can use our AI to make up for their lack of experience."
From Guangxi, AI is also playing a stronger role in healthcare, benefiting ASEAN countries. At Guangxi Medical University College of Stomatology, a multilingual AI interpretation system developed by its affiliated hospital enables real-time translation between Chinese and more than 10 Southeast Asian languages, with a focus on dental terminology, according to Kuang Hai, deputy Party secretary of the hospital.
Meanwhile, a system combining AI with VR allows dentists from ASEAN countries to practice clinical procedures in immersive virtual environments without having to travel across borders.
Kuang, who specializes in cleft lip and palate treatment and has led multiple surgical missions in Laos, said the hospital is also using AI to develop a speech assessment and rehabilitation platform for patients suffering from the condition. The platform is now being used by some in Laos.
Many patients continue to have speech difficulties after surgery due to poor coordination of their lip muscles, but speech rehabilitation is often overlooked, said Kuang. "The platform uses AI to analyze patients' speech, identify problems and provide targeted guidance and exercises online. This saves patients the time and expense of traveling to the hospital for therapy and improves rehabilitation outcomes," Kuang added.
So far, the platform has served more than 2,000 patient visits, including those from remote mountainous areas of Guangxi. In addition to Mandarin, it also supports Lao.
Beyond the applications, Guangxi is also working on the computing power needed to support real-world AI deployment.
In Nanning, RunDo, a platform operated by Runjian Co., Ltd., monitors almost 300 megawatts of solar capacity across nearly 3,000 sites in Malaysia remotely, with drones and AI replacing manual inspections. The platform has boosted maintenance efficiency by over 30 percent and cut labor costs by more than 20 percent, according to the company's data.
Runjian's token factory in Nanning can generate up to 200 billion tokens per hour. "We package computing power into standardized token services that users can access on demand, much like electricity or water," said Huang Haijiang, executive vice president of Runjian's token business division.
This allows users to avoid the costs and complexity of building their own computing infrastructure and fine-tuning AI models, while paying only for what they use, Huang added.
Guangxi's efforts are part of a broader national push to expand AI applications and explore overseas markets.
Guidelines issued by the State Council last week to accelerate the development of new quality productive forces highlighted the need to advance the "AI Plus" initiative and promote high-standard opening up. This points to new opportunities for AI cooperation between China and ASEAN, as the two sides have remained each other's largest trading partner for six consecutive years.
At the 23rd China-ASEAN Expo held last month, 296 AI companies participated, up 48 percent from the previous edition.
Xie Zhujun, deputy director of the information center at the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, said China-ASEAN digital cooperation is geared toward long-term coordination, has broad potential to drive the real economy and will bring lasting benefits to people across the region.
Editor：Zhou Jinmiao
