Securing AI Leadership
As IBM's Watson artificial intelligence (AI) platform, which finished learning Korean language, has declared to hit the domestic market on June 30, the cooperation between SK Telecom and SK Holdings C&C in the AI sector will be strengthened.
According to industry sources on April 16, SK Telecom and SK Holdings C&C will expand the AI business with their AI platforms – NUGU and Abril – and combine their AI services between the affiliates at the same time. The two companies plan to create a synergy through mutual cooperation between AI home assistant service NUGU and business-to-business (B2B) AI solution Abril.
SK Telecom established “AI business unit” on the 1st in order to help the affiliates cooperate smoothly. The AI business unit, which is directly under SK Telecom CEO Park Jung-ho, manages all the areas related to AI from securing technology to designing and developing services and expanding business. SK Planet CTO Lee Sang-ho now heads the AI business unit, while SK Holdings C&C's digital transformation President Lee Ho-soo has been appointed as the head of SK Telecom's information and communication technology (ICT) unit. Accordingly, collaboration between affiliates of SK Group is also expected to gain momentum.
When SK Telecom’s NUGU is connected with Abril engine, technologies and services will be advanced further. NUGU, which can currently speak only Korean, will be able to speak English and have a Korean application programming interface (API) as a key function.
In particular, industry watchers expect that SK Telecom’s IoT-only network will incorporate “Watson IoT,” including Abril. SK Telecom operates the nationwide Lora network, an IoT-only network established in July last year, and the existing LTE-M network together. In short, the company uses the Lora network in services to intermittently send and receive small data, the LTE-M network in services to frequently communicate for control in real time and the LTE network when sharing video-based massive data like closed circuit television (CCTV), maximizing the efficiency of IoT.
When various data collected through SK Telecom’s IoT-only network is combined with AI, the company’s competiveness in big data will be improved as well. For instance, SK Telecom can develop a new revenue model based on AI solutions, including power demand management consulting service, when the company collects and analyzes consumers’ power consumption data.
Previously, SK Telecom announced its plan to invest US$200 million (228.4 billion won) in the Watson IoT global headquarters in Germany in where IBM is based in a bid to strengthen its IoT and big data capabilities with AI. In addition, the competitive advantage for Watson is its ability to recognize and analyze even atypical data, which accounts for 80 percent of data around the world like images and videos.