SK Telecom talks up AI business with LLM deployments

Employees of SK Telecom listen to a lecture about the mobile carrier's business strategy utilizing multiple large language models on Wednesday. [SKT]

SK Telecom, Korea’s largest mobile carrier, will use multiple large language models (LLM), including its own, to strengthen its generative artificial intelligence business.

The move aligns with its push to bolster its presence in AI, following the popularity of OpenAI's ChatGPT and other hyperscale artificial intelligence.

SK Telecom’s own foundation model dubbed “A.” will be released this month for enterprises. A. is based on Korean and can answer questions, summarize and create new texts.

The mobile carrier will also interlink its primary business-to-business services with two other large language models developed by Anthropic and Konan Technology, both of which have received investment from SK Telecom.

Anthropic is a San Francisco-based AI safety and research company founded in 2021 by former members of OpenAI.

Konan Technology is a Korean AI software company founded in 1999. It developed Konan LLM which is promoted to have trained massive amounts of Korean language data to create Korean texts.

The update linking the mobile carrier’s primary services with other models will be made available in the fourth quarter of this year.

Further to this, SK Telecom is in discussion with government organizations and financial firms on a pilot project based on LLM, according to the company.

The telecom company also invested in local AI-utilizing customer service developer Persona AI for its AI Contact Center business, which incorporates various AI-related technologies in support centers for effective communications.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]