SK Telecom sees rise of personal AI assistants as game changer

BARCELONA – SK Telecom Co., South Korea’s top mobile carrier, sees the emergence of personal artificial intelligence assistants as a game changer in the AI industry, which is expected to bring opportunities for telecommunications service providers in the sector currently dominated by Big Tech companies, its CEO said.

“That is the future that A. is dreaming of,” SK Telecom CEO Ryu Young-Sang told reporters on Monday, referring to the company’s AI service, on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024, the world’s top telecommunications technology event, in Barcelona. “That will create a huge market.”

“We have yet to develop a perfect game changer service with A.,” Ryu said. “But we are preparing a separate personal AI assistant service for the global market.”

The comments came as SK Telecom aims to transform itself into an AI company from a mobile carrier.

Ryu said major global tech giants will not necessarily dominate the personal AI assistant sector, adding startups or telcos could develop such game changers.

He hoped SK Telecom’s global AI joint venture partners with heavyweights such as Europe’s largest telecommunication service provider Deutsche Telekom AG to co-develop personal AI assistants.

TO INTRODUCE LLMS FOR TELCOS THIS YEAR

Earlier in the day, SK Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, SoftBank Group Corp., Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (SingTel) and the United Arab Emirates’ e& agreed to establish a joint venture to develop large language models (LLMs), specifically tailored to the needs of telecommunication companies.

“I expect the LLMs to achieve a level by which not only SK Telecom but also the GTAA founding members can use them within this year,” Ryu said. The South Korean company set up the Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA) in July 2023 with Deutsche Telekom, SingTel and e&.

The four telecommunications service providers with a combined 1.3 billion users worldwide aim to expand the GTAA.

“It is a key to attract more telecommunications service operators to the GTAA. We can target up to triple digits,” Ryu said, although he thinks the GTAA should have only one member company per country.

Ryu emphasized the importance of LLMs for specific industries.

“The gap is expected to significantly widen between operators that are in industries creating vertical LLMs and those that are not,” he said, referring to language models that undergo specialized training in a specific domain or industry.

“Once we create a vertical LLM through the alliance, we can change the entire landscape and gain the upper hand in competition with other industries.”

AI DATA CENTER

Ryu expected AI data center and semiconductor companies to cash in on rapid growth in the intelligence of machines and software market.

SK Telecom is accelerating its AI data center business while hoping Sapeon Inc., spun off from the mobile carrier, develops AI semiconductors.

“The AI data center market will be explosive,” Ryu said. “We may start a visible AI data center service in Korea within this year.”

“Demand for Sapeon’s NPUs is predicted to grow if the AI sector focuses more on reasoning in the future,” he added, referring to neural processing units.

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.