SK Telecom considers adding LLM to iPhone recording app

LAS VEGAS -- SK Telecom Co. is considering adding a large language model (LLM) to its iPhone call-recording app for the first time in the industry, an executive said on Wednesday, as the leading South Korean mobile carrier aims to apply on-device artificial intelligence as software to the A. app, which will allow users to operate AI on mobile devices without a network connection.

“An LLM with fewer parameters may be included in an app although the LLM will have to perform well even with a small size,” Kim Yong-hun, SK Telecom’s vice president leading the A. app business, told South Korean reporters on the sidelines of the Consumer Electric Show (CES) 2024, the world’s largest annual tech trade show in Las Vegas.

The LLM parameters are the different features of the language model, such as the ability to generate different types of text, the ability to translate into different languages, and the ability to summarize text. The more parameters an LLM has, the more complex it can be and the more tasks it can perform.

The consideration came as Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest smartphone maker by volume, is set to release the Galaxy series equipped with on-device AI, which has real-time call interpretation features without additional apps.

ON-DEVICE, CLOUD

“On-device LLMs are expected to form a tech trend,” Kim said. “It was difficult to install LLMs on hardware in the past, but now chips have improved greatly and LLMs have become much lighter.”

“A specific device LLM may increase speeds while cutting costs just like edge computing, although we need to keep testing how well it performs,” he said.

Edge computing is a distributed computing framework that allows devices of the Internet of Things (IoT) to quickly process and act on data at the edge of the network.

To improve the performance, SK Telecom may consider using on-device LLMs only for works that do not require high technology and cloud-connected machines for jobs that need advanced technology in the long run as the performance of the language model running on gadgets is limited based on their size, Kim said.

TO LAUNCH AI TELEPHONE FUNCTION FOR ANDROID IN Q1

SK Telecom aims to release an AI telephone function with call recording and real-time interpretation features for Android smartphones in the first quarter, Kim said.

The A., SK Telecom’s AI personal assistant app, is currently providing the services only for Apple's iPhone models.

“We are trying to show the functions’ completion to the market much earlier than our initial plan, although its Android version is somewhat late,” Kim said.

The company is also improving technology for the A. Call Translator, its AI-based telephone interpreting service, he said, adding it is necessary to upgrade it item by item.

The A. app has grown “significantly” since it added iPhone call recording functions, Kim said, declining to provide details.

Write to Hyung-Kyu Kim at khk@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.