HYBE bets big on AI; to unveil generative AI project in May: Chairman Bang

HYBE Co. is set to wow the world again but this time with the much-hyped generative artificial intelligence technology as it plans to unveil an unprecedented creation next month in collaboration with a South Korean audio tech startup, its founder and chairman said during his recent interview with Billboard.

“Currently we’re running some small-scale projects with this company, and one of them is scheduled to be published and rolled out in May,” HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk told Billboard.

“This company” refers to Supertone Inc., a Korean startup with proprietary AI sound technology that the country’s most influential entertainment company acquired in January.

Bang expressed high expectations for this cutting-edge AI sound technology that can “clone a voice completely. Not just tone, but also intonation.”

“This technology can also replicate the character of a person, in any language. You can make the voice older or younger,” Bang explained.

Bang is fully embracing the latest move to use AI technology in HYBE’s entertainment business.

“I have long doubted that the entities that create and produce music will remain human. I don’t know how long human artists can be the only ones to satisfy human needs and human tastes,” Bang said in the interview.

“And that’s becoming a key factor for my operation and a strategy for HYBE.”

Bang urged the government to come up with rules for the use of generative AI technology and for society to develop a broad social consensus on its appropriate use “as soon as possible” instead of shunning its use in creative works due to fears that it would steal human creativity and invention. 

BUSINESS DIVERSIFICATION

HYBE’s AI project comes as HYBE has been actively diversifying its business portfolio by advancing into non-music production areas such as game, performance and fan meeting platforms, intellectual property, multimedia content and education businesses.

Supertone, founded in 2020, has expertise in various sound AI technologies including singing voice and text-to-speech synthesis, grapheme-to-phoneme, voice conversion, natural language processing and automatic speech recognition. It has collaborated with companies in the music, video content production and game industries.

Regarding HYBE’s backdown from its fight against Kakao Corp. for ownership of Korea’s first-generation entertainment pioneer SM Entertainment Co., Bang said he is “quite satisfied with the result,” citing growing uncertainties on the global economic and financial fronts.

In return, HYBE has won the chance to work with Kakao to reinforce its platform business such as Weverse, the global fandom life platform that HYBE has picked as a new growth revenue.

Bang’s interview originally appeared in the April 22, 2023 issue of Billboard, an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly, which provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events and style content related to the music industry.

K-pop septet BTS was the first Korean pop band to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart on May 24, 2018, with their “Love Yourself: Tear.” It also became the first K-pop act to grab the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Artist 100 chart with the album.

Write to Gyo-Beom Gu at gugyobeom@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.