SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom develop LLM for telcos

Jon Abrahamson, Claudia Nemat, Tim Höttges (all Telekom) James Ryu, SG Chung (both SKT). Source: SK Telecom

Telcos SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom have joint forces to develop an industry-specific language model (LLM) tailored to the requirements of digital assistants in customer service. It aim to make it easier for telecommunications companies to deploy generative AI models efficiently and quickly.

SKT and Deutsche Telekom plan to collaborate with AI companies such as Anthropic (Claude 2) and Meta (LLaMa2) to co-develop a multilingual – i.e, German, English, Korean, etc. – large language model (LLM) tailored to the needs of telcos. They plan to unveil the first version of the telco-specific LLM in the first quarter of 2024.

The two telecommunications companies have now signed a corresponding agreement (LOI) in Seoul, South Korea for the joint development.

“AI shows impressive potential to significantly enhance human problem-solving capabilities. 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,” said Claudia Nemat, member of the board of management for technology and innovation at Deutsche Telekom.

“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.