KT Brings “Everyone’s AI” Consortium Under One Roof, Putting Connection Before Models

KT is moving ahead with turning the consortium into a practical business organization ahead of the October beta launch of its AI service for the public, “Everyone’s AI.” On the 22nd, KT said it will fully launch the “Ieum Alliance,” a cooperative body of companies participating in “Everyone’s AI.”

The goal of the transition is to go beyond simply assembling multiple companies’ AI models and services on a single platform. It is meant to reduce decision-making delays that can arise during the launch schedule and technical integration process.

KT held the launch ceremony for the “Everyone’s AI” consortium on the 21st at the KT Gwanghwamun WEST building in Jongno-gu, Seoul. “Everyone’s AI” is a business that enables users to access a range of AI models and public, education, finance, and lifestyle services on a single platform.

The project is a government-led effort to expand AI to the public. The Ministry of Science and ICT selected three consortium operators led by KT, SK Telecom, and Kakao last month. The three consortiums are scheduled to launch official services within the year after beta service.

The launch ceremony for the KT consortium was attended by executives from major member companies and PMs from 16 participating companies. Along with the ceremony, KT said it has established an operating system that goes beyond simply combining the technologies and services of participating companies and instead jointly decides the business direction and launch schedule.

The defining feature of collaboration among the 16 companies, as KT described it, is that decision-making takes priority over technology. To that end, the Ieum Alliance will consist of the decision-making body, the “Ieum Connect Board,” and the regular consultative body, the “Ieum Eco Round.”

The “Ieum Connect Board” is responsible for determining the business’s major direction and priorities. It also coordinates service launch goals, inter-institution linkage tasks, and major pending issues.

The “Ieum Eco Round” is a regular consultative body that shares the performance of all participating institutions. It is tasked with reviewing the overall project schedule, checking whether stage-by-stage goals are being met, and sharing and spreading the achievements of participating companies.

In an open consortium involving multiple AI model and service companies, decision-making speed and the scope of responsibility between companies were presented as important factors, as well as individual technological performance. If decision-making and standards alignment fail, it becomes difficult to provide a consistent user experience like a single service, and areas requiring alignment include response quality, cost, latency, and data processing standards for models and services.

Ahead of the October beta service, KT set up a separate decision-making body and an integrated consultative body to reduce collaboration bottlenecks. In other words, it established separate structures for decision-making and consultation.

The execution organization is divided into a service division and a platform division. The service division is responsible for user-centered service planning, user experience (UX) design, linkage with public and specialized services, and launching public and specialized services. The platform division is responsible for linking and integrating AI models, token factories, data, infrastructure, and application programming interfaces (API).

KT’s core strategy is “Ieum Inside.” This strategy is not limited to providing a separate “Everyone’s AI” app and web service. It is a method of directly embedding AI functions into portal, education, shopping, finance, and housing services used by customers.

Under this framework, Upstage, Motif Technologies, Saltlux, and NC AI are participating in the KT consortium as AI model companies. Rebellions, RebellUp, and BespinAI are participating as AI infrastructure companies. Daum, Musinsa, Zigbang, EBS, Mathpresso, and BC Card are participating as lifestyle service companies, providing services with user touchpoints.

KT presented a structure centered on its AI operations platform, “Token Factory,” that connects suitable AI models and specialized services according to user questions and purposes. Under this structure, a general-purpose AI agent calls specialized services in the public, education, finance, shopping, and housing sectors.

Based on this, KT plans to build an open ecosystem that allows new AI model and service companies to join. However, whether it can maintain consistent response quality and service stability when actually connecting multiple models and services has emerged as a key issue. Whether response quality and stability can be maintained is expected to determine its future competitiveness.

KT plans to unveil the beta service for “Everyone’s AI,” applying the “Ieum Inside” strategy, next month. The initial verification targets are the level of interoperability between platforms and how naturally AI functions can be used within existing services.

Lee Jin-hyung, head of KT’s AX Business Division and executive vice president, said the consortium launch carries the meaning of serving as a starting point for bringing together the capabilities of domestic AI companies in AI models, platforms, and services, as well as creating AI services that people can feel in everyday life, and he said KT plans to strengthen cooperation among participating companies around the Ieum Alliance while working to create AI services that the public can experience in daily life.

Source: IT DAILY · Lee Jae-young
Original: https://www.itdaily.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=241771

References

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