KT and Microsoft (MS) have signed a big partnership to advertise cooperation in the bogus intelligence (AI) and cloud fields. This included constructing a Korean-style ‘Chat GPT’ and AI agent.
KT (CEO Kim Young-seop) announced that it signed a five-year strategic partnership price trillions of won with Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, USA for business cooperation within the AI, cloud, and IT fields.
This partnership will involve investment in AI, cloud technology, and IT, in addition to support for infrastructure and skilled manpower. It was not disclosed whether there have been separate contract terms.
The 2 corporations said that they’ve been in search of a rescue plan for his or her partnership through consultation because the agreement signed last June. In consequence, an agreement was reached on five key areas of cooperation: ▲Development of Korean-style AI solutions ▲Provision of Korean-style sovereign cloud solutions ▲Establishment of AX (AI conversion) specialized company ▲Strengthening AI R&D capabilities across the domestic technology ecosystem ▲KT’s step forward in AICT.
Microsoft has recently made large-scale investments in recent AI markets resembling Japan, India, and the ASEAN region. Most of them involve establishing data centers or supporting human resource training. Investments were also made in famous startups resembling France’s Mistral AI.
Nonetheless, as an alternative of basic investment, the partnership with KT involves advanced steps resembling constructing a customized model or establishing a specialized organization. This can be a form that focuses on service development and market expansion slightly than infrastructure construction.
First, each corporations announced that they’ll begin developing a Korean customized version of ‘GPT-4o’ through ‘Azure Open AI Service’. As well as, we plan to explore the event of an AI model optimized for Korea by utilizing MS’s representative small language model (sLM) ‘Phi’ product line.
Based on cultural and industrial data held by KT, a Korean-style AI model might be developed and applied to improving internal productivity, chatbots for customer support, and constructing AI solutions specialized for domestic industries in the longer term. Through this, the strategy is to offer customized AI services that best suit the needs of domestic customers and corporations.
Moreover, customized AI agents might be developed based on ‘Co-Pilot Studio’ and ‘Azure AI Studio’. To this end, KT utilizes customer use cases resembling education, healthcare, and the car industry.
In response, Shinhan Bank said, “We’re pleased to have the ability to strengthen our digital financial competitiveness through collaboration between KT and MS,” and added, “We’ll provide modern services based on the newest AI model to domestic financial customers by utilizing the KT GPT model specialized in Korean language and financial services.” “It’s,” he said.
In addition they agreed to develop and launch KT’s sovereign cloud solution ‘Secure Public Cloud’ service based on MS’s ‘Cloud for Sovereignty’.
As well as, KT is establishing an AX specialized company to support the AI transition of domestic corporations. The brand new corporation, comprised of experts within the AI, cloud, and IT fields, will transcend Korea and goal overseas markets resembling ASEAN based on Microsoft’s AI and cloud platform. MS plans to offer skilled consulting personnel for the following three years.
At the identical time, MS supports KT’s establishment of the AX Innovation Center. Here, ▲support for domestic corporations and institutions to construct AI solutions ▲investment in AI startups ▲vitalization of the domestic technology ecosystem ▲provision of Azure credits and technology.
As well as, KT and MS Research researchers decided to pursue joint research to introduce AI within the communications, medical, and industrial fields.
As well as, KT uses MS to advance its overall solutions, resembling migrating and updating existing IT workloads to Azure, and to strengthen internal AI capabilities, resembling introducing Co-Pilot to work.
KT CEO Kim Young-seop said, “This partnership with MS might be a big opportunity to expand the domestic AI base beyond easy technological cooperation and advance groundbreaking innovation in all domestic industries and each day life,” adding, “Based on our strategic partnership, we’ll achieve overwhelming competitiveness in domestic and overseas markets.” “We’ll quickly grow into an AICT company equipped with .”
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said, “Through this strategic partnership, we’ll have the ability to mix KT’s industrial expertise and your entire technology stack, from Azure AI to Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot,” and added, “MS will proceed to offer “We’ll speed up AI transformation and help more customers create recent AI-based experiences.”
Meanwhile, KT has been relatively quiet within the AI field in comparison with SK Telecom, which has focused on B2C business through partnerships with famous AI corporations resembling Antropic and Perplexity, and LG, which is expanding its B2B domain by constructing its own model.
Nonetheless, with this partnership with MS, full-fledged competition has begun not only in B2B but additionally in B2C.
Reporter Jang Se-min semim99@aitimes.com
