Tuesday, 22 October 2024

SK Telecom on 'Applying AI to Transform Customer Experience'

FutureNet Asia 2024 took place from September 17-18 at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, marking the event's fourth edition. Earlier this year, FutureNet World celebrated its sixth year in London. The event brought together over 400 industry leaders and visionaries to explore the intersections of network automation and AI.

Eric Davis, Vice President of the AI Tech Collaboration Group at SK Telecom, oversees collaborations with global tech partners to customize large language models (LLMs) for the telecommunications domain. His teams are responsible for designing and building datasets to fine-tune LLMs, as well as benchmarking LLMs both generally and specifically for the telecommunications sector. He gave an insightful talk on how SK Telecom is 'Applying AI to Transform Customer Experience'.

His talk is embedded below:

Following this event, SK Telecom announced AI Pyramid Strategy to become a global AI company. In a press release, they announced:

SKT sets forth ‘AI Pyramid Strategy’ to accelerate innovation centered around three key areas: AI Infrastructure, AI Transformation (AIX) and AI Service.

  • AI Infrastructure, which consists of data center, AI semiconductor, and multi LLM, will serve as a technology platform that forms the basis of SKT as an AI company.
  • AI Transformation (AIX) of SKT’s core business areas such as mobile, broadband and enterprise, as well as new business areas like mobility and healthcare will be pursued to reach a new level of productivity and customer experience.
  • In the area of AI Service, SKT announces the official launch of ‘A.’ and plans to build a globally competitive personal AI assistant service by leveraging its telco and AI assets.

It further mentioned:

SKT today announced that it has branded its AI technology as ‘A.X’ and named its large language model ‘A.X LLM’.

The company is pursuing a multi-LLM strategy, under which it takes a two-track approach to secure diverse LLM lineup as well as an overall platform that encompasses the LLMs. It is advancing its own LLM based on high-quality data accumulated over decades. Simultaneously, SKT is collaborating with a diverse range of partners, including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Konan Technology, to develop tailored LLM and related technologies specifically for the telco industry.

First, in terms of strengthening its own capabilities, SKT plans to advance its LLMs into telco-specific LLMs by leveraging its abundant telecommunications-related data.

In addition, the company will continue to secure more sophisticated LLM technologies based on its supercomputer Titan, which ranked no. 47 on the Top 500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers; high understanding of the Korean language trained with the world’s largest Korean language data; intelligence platform where multi LLMs and AI technologies customized for diverse telco use cases can be utilized; and multimodal LLM technologies that support communication via not only text but also voice, video, and so on.

SKT invested USD 100 million in Anthropic last month, and is working together with Anthropic to develop LLM customized to telcos. The company is also cooperating with Open AI, which includes co-hosting of an AI hackathon in Korea. SKT also invested KRW 22.4 billion in Konan Technology last year, and the two companies are collaborating to enter into the enterprise market with LLMs customized to corporate customers.

■ AI Transformation (AIX)

In the area of AIX, which is located in the middle layer of the AI Pyramid, SKT will innovate its existing core business areas like mobile, broadband and enterprise with AI, while at the same time expanding into new business areas such as mobility, AI healthcare, media and advertising technology. 

In the mobile business, the company stated that AI holds the power to significantly improve both profitability and customer experience. AI can not only be used to acquire/retain customers and provide better customer support via AI Contact Centers (AICC), but also be applied to the network infrastructure to enhance the efficiency in network deployment and operation. The company expects that, in the mid-to long-term, AI will help reduce 20 to 30% of costs compared to the current level.

SKT will also evolve SK Broadband’s Btv service into AI TV to deliver a new level of convenience and value. For instance, ‘AI Curation’ will identify the user and show personalized TV; and ‘AI Home’ will allow users to enjoy various media services by conversing with an AI agent.

In addition, by combining multi LLM with existing AI solutions like Vision AI, Language AI and Big Data AI, the company to expand its AICC business to financial institutions and data platform business to manufacturers. For its generative AI business, it will build customized services for public and financial institutions with strong needs for security and specialized services, while providing SaaS bundles to general corporate customers.

Furthermore, SKT will continue to pursue AI innovation and expand the overall AI ecosystem by growing its new business areas such as urban air mobility (UAM) and AI-based healthcare services like X Caliber. The company will also promote mergers and acquisitions in areas including media and advertising technology to create new business opportunities through AI transformation.

■ AI Service

SKT today announced the official launch of ‘A.’, the world’s first Korean LLM service released in the beta version in 2022. 

The company said that ‘A.’ will evolve into a personal AI assistant service by innovating customers’ communication experience and fully assisting their everyday lives via seamless connection to a wide variety of AI services. 

SKT plans to add an AI phone service, which enables new connections through communication innovation that can only be achieved by a telco. The AI phone will provide a variety of AI services and mobile experiences based on understanding and reasoning of call context.

For instance, it will recommend people to call based on call history and analyze the content exchanged during a call with AI to provide a call summary. At the same time, it connects users to necessary tasks, such as registering the schedule made during a call to the calendar or sharing addresses. More features such as real-time interpretation during calls will also be added going forward.

In terms of integrating AI into all aspects of daily life, SKT will start by offering an AI sleep management solution named ‘A. sleep’ and an AI music service this month.

‘A. sleep’ is developed by combining sleep management solution startup Asleep’s sleep solution and SKT’s AI. It evaluates sleep quality by analyzing user’s sleep patterns. No separate device is needed. It helps users start their day in the best possible condition by determining the ideal wake-up time depending on their sleep status and quality.

The AI music service will not only allow users to edit their playlist by simply talking to A., but also automatically recommend music that matches their tastes based on its generative customer prediction model.

Going forward, SKT plans to leverage its AI service-related experience and knowhow accumulated in the Korean market to develop a powerful personal AI assistant service that can attract global customers.

The company expects that its partnerships with diverse global players – including the Global Telco AI Alliance – will help accelerate its progress. SKT plans to expand its presence in the global AI service market by launching personal AI assistant services simultaneously in many countries across the world by working closely with telcos for localization and advancement of these services.

You can read the complete press release here.

Eric shared some interesting lessons that they have learned as part of rolling out their LLM powered use cases as can be seen from his slide above.

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