It’s late. You’ve just arrived home from work, there’s nothing in the fridge and your stomach is letting you know it’s beyond hungry. Seeking some culinary inspiration, you turn to a trusted friend for some advice on what to eat…

“A., I’m starving. What kind of food should I get?”

“I remember you like cheese pizza – how about ordering some in?”

“Great idea, A..”

A. (pronounced ‘A dot’) is SKT’s AI service, and it can answer questions, handle specific tasks and converse freely about almost any topic you care to name – something that the service’s more than one million users can already attest to.

Smarter, More Natural Interactions

With the aim of delivering greater convenience to enrich customers’ lives, SKT sought to create something more than just an advanced chatbot. Equally adept at discussing both intellectual subjects and more mundane, everyday topics, A. could be described as an AI companion; one that can learn from interactions and relate to users in a way that feels distinctly human.

Users can customize the character of A. to create a companion with a personality that works well with their own. They can also choose how they communicate with A. in any given interaction, as SKT’s service gives them the option to speak aloud, just as they would when hanging out with a friend, or hold a conversation over text message.

To enable users to hold natural conversations with A., SKT developed its own Korean large language model (LLM) based on Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), which employs deep learning to generate human-like responses to questions and statements. In May 2022, A. became the first-ever GPT-3-based Korean LLM chatbot released in the B2C market. (The service is currently available in Korean.)

A True AI Companion

One of the major factors that sets A. apart from other AI services is that it genuinely gives users a sense that it understands and cares for them. A. can ask users how they’re feeling and even provide helpful advice to protect their well-being. For example, by checking weather data in real-time, it can recommend appropriate clothing to keep them comfortable, or ensure they leave the house prepared for any inclement weather set to arrive that day.

A. has a long-term memory and can recall information from past conversations to offer a more personalized service. Over time, it can memorize important points and facts about the user’s tastes, preferences, hobbies, and occupation. This enables users to feel as if A. is an old friend that understands them better than others.

Moreover, communication with A. is further enriched with the application of multimodal technology. When a user talks with A. on a specific topic, A. shows relevant images to make suggestions and enhance the quality of the conversation. SKT trained A. with a large dataset containing one billion images, each paired with Korean text. This is how, in the usage scene at the start of this story, A. was able to understand what it was being asked and respond by suggesting ‘cheese pizza’ while providing a photo for visual reference at the same time.

SKT is set to provide even more convenience and value by seamlessly connecting A. to multiple services. In essence, A. will be an intelligent personal assistant as well as a trusted companion, helping users to do everything they need without having to open and navigate their way through a raft of different applications. While integration with third-party apps is on the way, A. already lets users take advantage of SKT’s various services, including music, content-streaming, English learning and navigation, saving them time and effort and streamlining the whole experience.

Just the Beginning for A.

Leveraging SKT’s in-depth understanding of the Korean market and consumers, A. will continue to grow and mature, accelerating and expanding its usefulness and humanness in a variety of ways. SKT recently made a KRW 15 billion equity investment in Scatter Lab, a Korean start-up known for its Lee Lu-da chatbot, and entered into strategic partnership with the firm to cooperate in diverse AI-related areas. Going forward, the company aims to collaborate with global AI tech companies and telcos to hasten the arrival of A. in overseas markets.

With AI at the core of its business, SKT will keep driving innovation to create new value and benefits for its customers.