TRAINING DECISIONS
ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot: which AI can a Hong Kong team actually use at work?
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On 5 October I ran an online Q&A clinic for the surgeons I had trained in August at the College of Surgeons of Hong Kong. Before the clinic we collected every question the Fellows had sent in and grouped them. Six concerns came out. The first two were about tools: is the paid version worth the money, and what can I actually use in Hong Kong.
These are not surgeon questions. I hear the same two in every company room. HR asks them when they plan a training budget. IT asks them when someone wants a new login. Staff ask them in the break, quietly, because they are already using something on their phone.
So here is the answer I gave that evening, written for a team rather than for one person.
The short answer
In Hong Kong, without workarounds, a team can use Gemini and Microsoft 365 Copilot. Grok and Perplexity also work here.
ChatGPT and Claude are not offered in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is not on OpenAI's list of supported countries for ChatGPT, and it is not on Anthropic's list of supported regions. That is the vendors' choice, not a Hong Kong government ban.
Gemini is the change this year. Google now lists Hong Kong as a supported location for the Gemini web app, which local reports date to March 2026. For a long time it was the other way round.
What I tell a company to roll out
Start from what the organisation already pays for.
If you have Microsoft 365 with Copilot licences, use them fully. I said this to the surgeons and I say it to every client. The company has already paid. If nobody uses it, the money is gone anyway. The corporate version of Copilot also gives you OpenAI's GPT models through Microsoft. In other words, your staff do not need ChatGPT to get GPT. They need the Copilot seat they may already have.
Check the seat first, though. Many companies pay for Microsoft 365 and assume that means Copilot. It often does not. I wrote about how to count that properly in Microsoft Copilot training for Hong Kong companies.
If you run on Google Workspace, or you have nothing yet, Gemini is the easy start. It is available here, it is cheap, and it is the tool most people I meet in Hong Kong have already touched.
Before any training, someone has to answer the question "what are we allowed to use?" in writing.
Is the paid version worth it?
Yes. That was my one-line answer at the clinic, and I still think it is right.
When you pay an AI company, you are not really buying extra features. You are buying a share of their computing power. Every question you ask burns electricity, cooling and chips on a server far away. The free version is how they attract you. The paid version is how they pay for it. So the gap between free and paid is not a few buttons. It is how much intelligence you actually get.
I have watched people try a free tool many times, find it useless for their work, and conclude they are bad at prompting. Very often the problem is not their technique. They were using a weaker model.
For a team, my advice is simple:
- Try the cheapest paid plan first, before spending time guessing.
- For daily, long-term use, the tier around US$20 a month per person is enough.
- Do not jump to the US$200-plus plans. Most people will not use what they pay for.
One more honest point. The tools that work in Hong Kong without a workaround are good for everyday work: writing, summarising, meeting notes, first drafts, simple analysis. In my own work, the strongest reasoning and writing today come from ChatGPT and Claude, and neither is officially offered here. Paying more for a Hong Kong-available tool buys you more capacity, not a smarter model. Decide which kind of work you need AI for, then choose. For most teams, everyday work is the job, and accessibility matters more than the last bit of intelligence.
Which data can go in?
This was concern number five at the clinic, and it decides more than the tool does.
I explained it to the surgeons with a lab analogy. A cloud AI tool, such as Gemini, Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude, is like sending a sample to an outside lab. Your data leaves the building. A model your IT team runs on your own servers is like a machine in your own department. Nothing leaves, but it is smaller and IT has to set it up.
Cloud is never absolutely safe. Two habits help:
- Turn off "use my data for training" in the privacy settings, if your plan offers it.
- Remove identifiers before you upload. Delete the name and ID columns from the spreadsheet. Cover the names on a document before you photograph it.
Inside a company, I go one step further and sort every file before anyone opens an AI tool: red never goes in, yellow goes in only after names are removed, green is free to use. That method has its own write-up: the Traffic Light Protocol. Your company's own policy always comes first.
What this means for training
Training should happen on the tool your staff will actually be allowed to use on Monday. Teaching ChatGPT tricks to a team that only has Copilot is a nice afternoon that changes nothing.
So the first questions I ask any Hong Kong client are not about prompts. They are:
- Which AI tools are staff officially allowed to use today?
- Who has a paid seat, and which one?
- Which files are red, yellow and green for this team?
When those three are answered, the training can be about real work. That is how I run corporate AI training in Hong Kong, and it is what the surgeons' course was built on: see AI for Surgeons.
FAQ
Is ChatGPT banned in Hong Kong?
Not by Hong Kong. OpenAI does not list Hong Kong as a supported country, so ChatGPT is not officially offered here. Companies can reach OpenAI's GPT models through Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Can I use Gemini in Hong Kong?
Yes. Google lists Hong Kong as a supported location for the Gemini web app.
Is Claude available in Hong Kong?
No. Hong Kong is not on Anthropic's list of supported regions.
Is Copilot the same as ChatGPT?
Not the same product. Microsoft 365 Copilot runs on OpenAI's models inside your Microsoft 365 account, and your IT team controls it. For most Hong Kong companies, it is the approved way to use GPT at work.
Should my company pay for AI tools?
For anyone who will use AI weekly, yes. Start with the cheapest paid tier, keep the around-US$20 tier for daily use, and skip the top plans until someone can show they need them.
Planning AI training for your team?
Tell me about your team's work and where it gets stuck. We can decide the right format from there.
If your own colleagues will run the follow-up sessions, see AI train-the-trainer in Hong Kong.