Korea’s LG telecom unit unveils AI agent with own technology

LG Uplus Corp., South Korea’s No. 3 mobile carrier, has introduced an artificial intelligence agent platform based on its own ixi AI technology as the company seeks a new growth driver amid a saturated local telecom market.

At an online press conference on Monday, the unit of South Korea’s fourth-largest conglomerate unveiled the Chat Agent platform, an AI agent able to understand unprogrammed professional questions and commands. That compares with the functions of a bot, a software application programmed only to do certain tasks.

LG Uplus said the platform can protect customers' private data while cutting time and costs by combining it with the ixi’s natural-language understanding (NLU) and large language model (LLM).

The company is already using Chat Agent for its customer service centers, for subscription product recommendations and in the business solution sales division.

“The platform was much more effective than expected for some sectors such as the customer service center,” Sung Joon Hyun, LG Uplus vice president for its AI business, said at an online press conference.

TO EXTEND TO B2B MARKET

LG Uplus expects the platform to be capable of inference by learning customer consulting history once the company applies its own generative AI model ixi-GEN, which will be unveiled in the first half.

“We will be able to the ixi-GEN’s features and technology from a strategic point of view around the end of the first half,” Sung said.

LG Uplus plans to expand the Chat Agent platform into its entire businesses including the mobile and internet protocol television while launching its service for small and medium-sized business customers in the second half.

The company also aims to extend its AI agent business to the business-to-business market.

“AICC customers are asking for AI functions for phone calls and chats,” Sung said, referring to AI call centers. “We will propose related services to customers based on the data accumulated after applying Chat Agent within the company.”

Write to Ju-Hyun Lee at deep@hankyung.com
 

Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.