LG Uplus employees testing ixi-GEN (Courtesy of LG Uplus)
South Korean major mobile carrier LG Uplus Corp. officially launched its generative artificial intelligence model ixi-GEN on Tuesday, joining its two bigger crosstown rivals KT Corp. and SK Telecom Co. in a race to lead the business-to-business generative AI market.
Its generative AI is a smaller large language model (sLLM) trained with its communication and platform data on the hyperscale multimodal AI Exaone, developed by LG AI Research, the artificial intelligence lab under LG Group, said LG Uplus.
While a general LLM, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, comes in sizes ranging from hundreds of billions to even a trillion parameters, a sLLM comes in much smaller sizes with a focus on a certain industry or business.
As a lighter LLM, ixi-GEN can be fine-tuned faster than larger language models to perform specific tasks or behaviors for particular industry uses better.
It boasts high security because it can be installed in a local server, instead of the cloud. It is also less likely to encounter copyright infringement lawsuits as it is trained on clean data offered by Exaone, according to the company.
LG Uplus will apply ixi-GEN to its eight services, including chat agent and mobile shop adviser services, within this year before offering it to the B2B market.
Its generative AI is a telecom-specific AI model, allowing rapid application in telecommunications services.
ixi-GEN features (Courtesy of LG Uplus)
Along with the generative AI tool, the company also introduced an AI development platform called ixi Solution, which enables even ordinary people to use AI in the real world.
KOREA’S TOP 3 MOBILE CARRIERS IN A GENERATIVE AI RACE
As the smallest of Korea’s top three mobile carriers has launched its proprietary generative AI service, a generative AI race in the country’s telecommunications industry is set to intensify.
Its bigger rival KT last year unveiled the generative AI service Mi:dm for corporate clients, and the country’s No. 1 mobile carrier SK Telecom is expected to introduce its LLM tailored for telecom companies this month at the earliest.
SK Telecom has been developing global telecom-specific LLM in partnerships with SoftBank, Deutsche Telekom, Singapore Telecommunications and the United Arab Emirates’ e&.
Korea’s telecom trio have picked AI as their next growth engine to offset slow growth momentum in the country’s saturated telecom and internet markets.
LG Uplus is speeding up its transition into an AI company to lead AI transformation (AX).
In early April, it announced a plan to ramp up investment in AI this year by 30 to 40% from last year and double its AI talent.
By Ju-Hyun Lee
deep@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.
