In a groundbreaking initiative, leading telecommunications companies have joined forces under the Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA). They announced plans to create a joint venture this year aimed at revolutionizing customer service through advanced artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. The alliance comprises SK Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, e& Group, Singtel, and SoftBank Corp. It seeks to develop Large Language Models (LLMs) specifically tailored to the needs of the telecom industry, promising to redefine customer interactions on a global scale.
Global Telco AI Alliance
The inaugural meeting of the GTAA took place at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2024. Participating companies unveiled their collaborative efforts to leverage AI technologies for members in their respective markets. Notable attendees included key executives such as SK’s Chairman Chey Tae-won, SKT’s CEO Ryu Young-sang, and e& Group’s Group CEO Hatem Dowidar, among others.
What will the joint venture do?
The GTAA announced plans to establish a joint venture dedicated to developing multilingual LLMs tailored for its markets. These advanced AI models enhance customer interactions through digital assistants and chatbots. Moreover, they aim to cater to diverse linguistic and operational needs across different markets.
The joint venture aims to create LLMs optimized for languages including Korean, English, German, Arabic, and Japanese. Moreover, it aims to include additional languages based on consensus among the founding members. By pooling resources and expertise, the alliance seeks to deploy innovative AI applications that cater to its specific requirements. This enables it to reach a global customer base of approximately 1.3 billion across 50 countries.
Targeted training
Unlike general LLMs, telco-specific models undergo targeted training using customer service data to address industry-specific queries and concerns. By fine-tuning the models to understand the unique language and needs of telecom operators, the GTAA aims to deliver enhanced, personalized, and efficient customer experiences. Therefore, this will redefine the standards of service excellence in the telecommunications landscape.
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Collaborative impact
Executives from member companies expressed their vision for the joint venture. Moreover, they emphasized the potential for AI-driven innovation to transform customer engagement and service delivery. “We want our customers to experience the best possible service. AI helps us do that. Already today, more than 100,000 customer service dialogs a month in Germany are handled by Generative AI,” stated Claudia Nemat, board member of Deutsche Telekom for Technology and Innovation.
For her part, Dena Almansoori, group chief AI and data officer, e& group stated: “This multi-lingual LLM will revolutionize how businesses engage with customers. In collaboration with our Global AI Telco Alliance partners, we look forward to shaping both the present and future of customer engagement.”
“The Global Telco AI Alliance brings synergy to its members by allowing them to achieve more by working as a team,” said Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT.
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