Looking for a big edge in AI, South Korean companies are thinking smaller

ChatGPT, Bard, Claude. The world’s most popular and successful chatbots are trained using data collected from large parts of the internet, reflecting the cultural and linguistic dominance of the English language and Western perspectives. This has raised alarms about the lack of diversity in the field of artificial intelligence. There are also concerns that the technology will remain the domain of a handful of American companies.

In South Korea, a technology powerhouse, companies are taking advantage of the technology’s malleability to shape AI systems from the ground up to meet local needs. Some have trained AI models with datasets rich in Korean language and culture. South Korean companies say they are building AI for Thai, Vietnamese and Malaysian audiences. Others are looking at customers in Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines, and in sectors such as medicine and pharmaceuticals.

This has fueled hopes that AI can become more diverse, work in more languages, be adapted to more cultures, and be developed by more countries.

“The more competition there is, the more robust the systems will be: socially acceptable, more secure and more ethical,” said Byong-Tak Zhang, professor of computer science at Seoul National University.

While there are some prominent non-US AI companies, such as France’s Mistral, the recent turmoil at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has highlighted how concentrated the industry still is.

South Korea’s emerging AI landscape is one of the most competitive and diverse in the world, said Yong Lim, a law professor at Seoul National University who leads the AI ​​Policy Initiative. The country’s export-driven economy has encouraged new companies to look for ways to tailor AI systems for specific companies or countries.

South Korea is well positioned to develop AI technology, according to developers, as the country has one of the most wired populations in the world that can generate vast amounts of data to train AI systems. The technology giants have the resources to invest heavily in research. The government is also encouraging: It has provided companies with money and data that can be used to train large language models, the technology that powers AI chatbots.

Few other countries have the combination of capital and technology needed to develop a large language model that can power a chatbot, experts say. They estimate it will cost $100 million to $200 million to build a foundational model, the technology that serves as the basis for AI chatbots.

South Korea is still months behind the United States in the AI ​​race and may never fully catch up as the leading chatbots continue to improve with more resources and data.

But South Korean companies believe they can compete. Rather than going after the global market like their US competitors, companies like Naver and LG have tried to target their AI models at specific industries, cultures or languages ​​rather than branching out from the entire internet.

“The localized strategy is a reasonable strategy for them,” said Sukwoong Choi, a professor of information systems at the University at Albany. “US companies are focused on general purpose tools. South Korean AI companies can focus on a specific area.”

Outside the United States, the reach of AI appears limited. In China, Baidu’s answer to ChatGPT, called Ernie, and Huawei’s big language model have shown some success domestically, but are far from dominant in the global market. Governments and companies in other countries such as Canada, Britain, India and Israel have also said they are developing their own AI systems, although no system has yet been released for the public to use.

About a year before ChatGPT was released, Naver, which operates South Korea’s most used search engine, announced that it had successfully developed a major language model. But the chatbot based on that model, Clova Septemberalmost a year after ChatGPT’s debut.

Nako Sung, an executive at Naver who led the company’s generative AI project, said the timing of ChatGPT’s release surprised him.

“Until then, we had taken a conservative approach to AI services and only cautiously explored the possibilities,” said Mr Sung. “That’s when we realized the timeline had accelerated significantly,” he added. “We decided we had to move immediately.”

Now Naver is using an AI model built from the ground up for Korean speakers, using data from the South Korean government and from its search engine, which has wiped out the country’s internet since 1999.

Clova Naver’s chatbot is also integrated into the search engine, allowing people to use the tool for shopping and travel.

Outside of its home market, the company is exploring business opportunities with the Saudi Arabian government. Japan could be another potential customer, experts say, because Line, a Naver messaging service, is widely used there.

LG has also created its own generative AI model, the type of artificial intelligence capable of creating original content based on input, called Exaone. Since its founding in 2021, LG has worked with publishers, research centers, pharmaceutical companies and medical companies to tailor the system to their data sets and provide them with access to the AI ​​system.

The company is targeting businesses and researchers rather than the general user, said Kyunghoon Bae, director of LG AI Research. The subsidiaries have also started using their own AI chatbots. One of the chatbots, built to analyze chemistry research and chemical equations, has been used by researchers building new materials for batteries, chemicals and medicines.

“Rather than letting the best one or two AI systems dominate, it is important to have a set of models specific to a domain, language or culture,” said Honglak Lee, chief scientist of the AI ​​research division of LG.

Another South Korean behemoth, Samsung, last month announced Samsung Gauss, a generative AI model used internally to compose emails, summarize documents and translate text. The company plans to integrate it into its mobile phones and smart home appliances.

Other major companies have also said they are developing their own large language models, making South Korea one of the few countries where so many companies are building AI systems. KT, a South Korean telecommunications company, has said it is working with a Thai counterpart, Jasmine Group, on a major language model specializing in the Thai language. Kakao, which makes an eponymous chat super app, has said it is in development generative AI for Korean, English, Japanese, Vietnamese and Malaysian.

Still, the United States’ dominance in AI seems secure for now. It remains to be seen how close the countries can catch up.

“The market is convulsing; it is very difficult to predict what will happen,” said Mr Lim, the AI ​​policy expert. “It’s the Wild West in a way.”