Global technology giant Google announced on Wednesday the opening of its artificial intelligence (AI) center in China during its second developers conference in Shanghai.

The new AI center will be based in Beijing. A small group of researchers supported by hundreds of Chinese engineers will be working there. Basic AI research will be the main area that the center will be focusing on.

Li Feifei, chief scientist of AI and machine learning at Google Cloud, will lead the research group of this new center. The center will seek cooperation with the local academia and other possible partners since China is one of the world leaders in AI technology development with ample supply of top talents in this area, she said.

"The center is a corporate-level effort. It is one of the first steps for Google to carry out long-term research in the Chinese market," she said.

The preparation for this center started in January. A number of Google's teams, such as the one for Tensor Flow - computation using data flow graphs for scalable machine learning, have taken part in the establishment of this center.