SK Telecom recently announced that it was launching an artificial intelligence (AI) service called “A.” (A dot). It will be available on Google Play and One Store as an open beta version for Android. The ‘A.’ stands for SKT’s vision to become a leading AI Services Company that provides customers with warm, human-centered technology and services that enhance their lives.
“We created ‘A.’ as a means to provide customers with the benefits of warm, human-centered technologies in this era of AI,” said Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT. “Going forward, we expect ‘A.’ to constantly grow and become a more valuable service with the active participation of customers.”
By managing many different tasks on customers’ smartphones, ‘A.’ helps them use their time more effectively and recommends/plays music and videos that match their tastes. A.’s goal is to save time for customers and to achieve their tasks in an intelligent manner.
With a natural language processor and sentiment analysis built-in, ‘A.’ allows customers to interact with an AI character that understands their individual needs.
As a result of using AI technology in ‘A.’, daily conversations based on the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) are seamlessly integrated with customer-specified tasks. A customer can naturally shift from freely conversing with ‘A.’ to task-oriented dialogue while having a free conversation with ‘A.’.
The open beta version of “A.” still has some room for improvement. Customer feedback and constant self-learning are expected to make it smarter and more helpful. The ‘A.’ app allows users to create and customize an AI character that reflects their personality, send it text messages and conversations, and ask it diverse questions.
Customers can conveniently access a long list of services with their T ID* by using apps like FLO (music), Wavve (OTT), T Map (navigation), and T World. *T ID is a login ID that enables customers to access a variety of SKT’s services with a single username and password.
The app also lets customers send and receive text messages, make and receive calls, set alarms, manage schedules, and check the weather, news, and stock quotes each day.
The ‘A.’ open beta service is accessible to Android smartphone users regardless of their mobile carrier at first, and all services within the app will be free. SKT is presently developing ‘A.’ for iOS and hopes to deliver it as quickly as possible.
