SK Telecom has launched the open beta of its growing AI assistant, 'A. (Adot),' providing personalized customer services that handle various tasks in daily life.

SK Telecom released the Android open beta version of 'A. (Adot)' on One Store and Google Play Store on the 16th. The iso version will be released about a month later in June.

The 'A' in 'A.(Adot)' stands for AI's representative initial 'A' and contains the meaning of providing 'Art' level service to customers.

SKT AI&CO Director Hyunah Lee said, “A. (Adot) started from thinking about how to provide a better experience to customers,” and added, “The ultimate goal of A. (Adot) is the idea that customers’ limited time should be used for more valuable things.”

■ New ‘Daily Digital Mate’… Character interaction, various content provided

'A.' is a platform that strengthens relationships with customers by communicating with them through your own character based on advanced natural language processing and sentiment analysis technology. It combines the processing of everyday conversations and specific tasks based on a giant language model (GPT-3).

NUGU is integrated into 'A.' and can be seen as the first attempt to evolve into a B2C format.

'A.' Users can create and decorate characters that reflect their own individuality, and voice conversations are possible.

SKT said that 'A.' is a visual agent that is differentiated from existing voice-centered agents, and that it also considered emotional aspects such as the possibility of forming character intimacy and attachment through conversational interaction.

Through FLO and wavve integration, you can receive content tailored to your tastes and use various services necessary for daily life, such as TMAP, calendar, phone, and text.

On the 16th, Lee Hyun-ah, head of AI&CO, personally demonstrated ‘A.’ In the app, the daily information providing functions such as △determining character concepts △small talk and free conversation △like function △audio △music △quest △alarm function △route finding (connected to T map) △life information △weather △fortune telling △news △dictionary △translation generally operated smoothly.

In particular, the user-participatory 'Cupid' service is similar to third-party knowledge services and said that it has improved speed and accuracy by delivering questions directly to the answerer found using AI.


■ Insufficient open beta version, growing together with customers

'A.' will first begin open beta service targeting Android-based smartphone customers.

It is still in its early stages, and we aim to provide a service that grows together with our customers through continuous dialogue with them and data accumulation through user feedback.

Currently, only services in partnership with the SKT Family are being provided, but in the second half of the year, new functions such as ‘My TV’ and games are being added and service areas are being expanded through third-party partnerships.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether 'A.' can avoid a second Iruda incident. As it is a growing AI service, it will be difficult to avoid concerns about personal information security.

SKT said about the nature of this that there may be concerns about the security of personal information, "During the data collection and learning process, we conducted a filtering process for personal information and biased information before model learning." They added, "It is still in open beta, so there are some shortcomings, but we have gone through numerous internal testing processes and will continue to improve it through user feedback in the future."

Regarding the revenue model, he emphasized that there is no quantitative target for expected user subscribers and no revenue model.

“Our goal for the time being is to stabilize the service through customer feedback,” he said. “As the number of users increases, we will naturally build premium features such as specialized services and memberships.”

SKT's Lee Hyun-ah, AI&CO Director, said, "SKT's 'A.' service has a desired goal of saving time and resources rather than competing with other services, and achieving this goal is its main goal."