A staff member demonstrates his interaction with a virtual human during the Global Digital Economy Conference 2024 (GDEC 2024) in Beijing, capital of China, July 2, 2024. (Xinhua/Ren Chao)

BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The added value of Beijing's digital economy totaled 2 trillion yuan (about 278 billion U.S. dollars) in 2024, up about 7.5 percent year on year, local authorities said on Wednesday.

The Chinese capital currently has more than 2,400 artificial intelligence (AI) companies, said Liu Weiliang, deputy head of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, at the annual session of the municipal people's congress.

Positioning AI as a core driving force for the development of the digital economy, Beijing has put an AI data training base into operation and completed intelligent infrastructure deployment across 600 square kilometers of its high-level autonomous driving demonstration zones in 2024, Liu said.

In 2025, Beijing plans to focus on promoting AI application in medical fields, developing AI products for teaching and learning scenarios, enhancing the digitization of public services, and accelerating the transformation and upgrading of industrial digitization, Liu noted.