SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom collaborate over telco-specific AI

Chat GPT is all well and good but is it useful for telcos? SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom think not, and so have decided to develop their own AI.

Specifically, they’re going to collaborate to make a large language model (LLM) just for the telecoms world. LLMs are the data sets that underpin AI models such as Chat GPT. You see, they don’t actually think for themselves, they just use lots of computational power to tap enormous wells of information, then use natural language processing to deliver their findings in a vaguely conversational way.

It stands to reason, therefore, that an AI model is only as useful as its LLM, and that specific use-cases may require bespoke ones. So serious are SKT and DT about this venture that they’ve signed a Letter of Intent to make it official and even held a ceremony to commemorate what is surely already a historical document. As you can see from the photo above, everything seems to have gone well on the big day.

“Through our partnership with Deutsche Telekom, we have secured a strong opportunity and momentum to gain global AI leadership and drive new growth,” said Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT. “By combining the strengths and capabilities of the two companies in AI technology, platform and infrastructure, we expect to empower enterprises in many different industries to deliver new and higher value to their customers.”

“AI shows impressive potential to significantly enhance human problem-solving capabilities,” said Claudia Nemat, DT board member. “To maximize its use especially in customer service, we need to adapt existing large language models and train them with our unique data. This will elevate our generative AI tools.”

This is apparently the first product of the Global Telco AI Alliance, which was formed over the summer. It doesn’t look like they’re going to attempt to totally reinvent the wheel, however, as they will be getting help from Anthropic and Meta, who already have LLMs in the form of Clause and Llama, respectively.

“The telco-specific LLM will have a higher understanding of telecommunication service-related areas and customer’s intentions than general LLMs, making it suitable for customer services like AI contact center,” says the press release. The LLM will apparently be made available to all telcos, on terms that weren’t revealed.

Get the latest news straight to your inbox. Register for the Telecoms.com newsletter here.