(Yicai Global) April 13 -- Shares of BlueFocus Intelligent Communications Group soared after staff at the major Chinese advertising and public relations agency confirmed that managers had decided to stop spending on outsourced creative design and copywriting in favor of using artificial intelligence technology.

After soaring by as much as 18.7 percent in the morning, BlueFocus [SHE: 300058] ended 9.8 percent higher at CNY9.55 (USD1.39) today.

The decision to not outsource creative work aims to lay the groundwork for BlueFocus to fully embrace AI-generated content models, The Paper reported yesterday, citing the Beijing-based firm as saying in an internal company email.

“BlueFocus is actively experimenting with ChatGPT technology,” it noted on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's interactive platform for investors in February. “Future digital expansion will be done with AIGC and terminal interaction while the company tests and debugs other ChatGPT-like products,” it said.

Against the backdrop of the market's focus on AI technology, the company’s stock price has climbed 70 percent since the start of last month.

The shares have fluctuated abnormally, the company said on March 17, noting that it is one of the first ecology partners of Ernie Bot, Baidu’s challenger to ChatGPT, but has not launched a related marketing product.

Since US startup OpenAI launched ChatGPT, or Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, last November, a number of Chinese tech giants have followed suit, announcing the development of similar products.

On April 11, BlueFocus said it had obtained Microsoft's Azure OpenAI service license.

Editor: Martin Kadiev