The team called “OpenCubee-1” from the University of Information Technology under Việt Nam National University-HCM City wins the Category A first prize of the HCM City AI Challenge 2026 at the awards ceremony on October 17. — VNS Photos Nguyễn Diệp

HCM CITY — Teams from the University of Information Technology and the High School for the Gifted under Việt Nam National University-HCM City (VNU-HCM) secured the first prizes at the HCM City Artificial Intelligence Challenge (AI Challenge) 2026 awards ceremony on October 17.

Team “OpenCubee-1” from the University of Information Technology won first prize in Category A for university students and youth. Meanwhile, the “Chàng Lính Ngự Lâm” team from the High School for the Gifted took first prize in Category B for high school students.

The awards ceremony took place at VNU-HCM’s University of Technology.

It was hosted by the city Department of Science and Technology in coordination with VNU-HCM, the Department of Education and Training, the HCM City Youth Union, the HCM City Computer Association, and the Quang Trung Software Park Development Company Limited.

Speaking at the event, Phạm Huỳnh Quang Hiếu, deputy director of the Department of Science and Technology, said the primary goal of the annual competition is to discover young talent and foster practical technological solutions for urban governance and digital government building.

"The ultimate goal of the competition extends beyond selecting winning teams to discovering AI talent and nurturing tech solutions with real-world applications," Hiếu said.

The continuous increase in participating teams reflects the strong interest and proactive approach of the youth in mastering foundational language models and multimodal search tools, he added.

Celebrating its latest edition after a four-month campaign, the competition attracted a record 811 teams with 4,005 contestants from 198 units across the city and neighbouring localities.

Following three preliminary rounds held between August 21 and September 4, the organising committee selected 86 outstanding teams for the final round, comprising 59 teams in Category A and 27 teams in Category B.

Centred on the theme of developing smart virtual assistants to analyse and retrieve big multimedia data, finalists were tasked with exploiting real-world image and video feeds from HCM City’s traffic camera system.

Specifically, the winning solutions developed by the teams involved building advanced virtual assistants capable of leveraging language models, multimodal information search, reasoning, and smart interaction to process massive traffic camera datasets spanning over 500 hours.

These AI-driven solutions are designed to accurately and quickly retrieve urban video and image data, supporting municipal management, digital government operations, and smart city development.

The finals adopted international academic competition models, namely the Lifelog Search Challenge and Video Browser Showdown, requiring contestants to build smart virtual assistants capable of multimodal information retrieval, reasoning, and analysis over massive datasets.

Representatives of the organisers present the Category B first prize to the “Chàng Lính Ngự Lâm” team from the High School for the Gifted under Việt Nam National University-HCM City during the closing and awards ceremony of the HCM City AI Challenge 2026 on October 17.

The organisers presented 52 official awards to recognise innovative approaches and persistent research efforts.

Beyond the competition, participants benefited from specialised training workshops guided by domestic and international experts, as well as opportunities to visit local IT and AI enterprises.

Top-performing methodologies validated by experts will be invited to present at a special session on Lifelog and Multimedia Event Retrieval at the 15th International Symposium on Information and Communication Technology, with proceedings published by the ACM.

Selected algorithms may also be submitted to Q1-ranked academic journals, alongside ongoing support for intellectual property registration, product incubation, and connection with smart city implementation units. — VNS