The LLMs will be designed to help telcos improve their customer interactions via digital assistants and chatbots
Korea’s largest telco SK Telecom said it expects to introduce a large language model (LLM) specializing in telecom-related terms next month, according to local press reports. SK Telecom partnered with global firms including OpenAI and Anthropic to develop the LLM.
SK Telecom’s CEO Ryu Young-sang recently highlighted that the telco-specific LLM will likely be commercialize during 2024. Eric Davis, vice president of AI tech collaboration at SK Telecom, had noted that the new LLM would perform about 35% better compared to the GPT-4.
SK Telecom expects the telco-specific LLM would reduce the current time it takes to perform various key tasks including customer consulting, marketing, legal services and human resources. The LLMs will be designed to help telcos improve their customer interactions via digital assistants and chatbots.
After the domestic launch of the LLM offering in early June, the Korean carrier aims to develop multiple LLMs and launch them in other languages at a global level by taking advantage of the Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA), which was launched by SK Telecom and other partners with the main goal of developing a telco-specific LLM model and related AI services. Other members of the alliance include Deutsche Telekom, e& Group, Singtel Group and SoftBank.
The partners of the GTTA also announced a joint venture with the aim of developing multilingual LLMs optimized for languages including Korean, English, German, Arabic and Japanese, with plans for additional languages to be agreed among the founding members.
Compared to general LLMs, telco-specific LLMs are more specific to the telecommunications domain and better at understanding user intent, the partners said.
The JV also announced plans to focus on deploying innovative AI applications tailored to the needs of the Global AI Telco Alliance members in their respective markets, enabling them to reach a global customer base of approximately 1.3 billion across 50 countries.
The partners also said that the establishment of the JV company is expected to be completed within this year, adding that they have already started work to train the model. This targeted training ensures the LLM understands the unique language and needs of telecom operators.
Last year, SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom had announced plans to jointly develop an industry-specific language model. The two telcos said that the new offering will be specially tailored to the requirements of digital assistants in customer service and will make easier for telecommunications companies to deploy generative AI models efficiently and quickly.
SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom had also announced plans to collaborate with AI companies such as Anthropic and Meta to co-develop a multilingual large language model tailored to the needs of telcos, with plans to unveil the first version of the telco-specific LLM in the first quarter of 2024.
