Dubai: The UAE's e& has formed a second joint venture with some of the world's biggest telecom and tech entities, this time to develop and launch a multi-lingual LLM (Large Language Model) specifically for the telecom sector.
e&'s partners are SK Telecom of South Korea, Germany's Deutsche Telekom, Singtel of Singapore and Japan's SoftBank Corp.. They are also founders of the Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA), which was set up at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year. Now, the group extends its reach further within the evolving AI space, this time specifically in LLM possibilities.
A Large Language Model is an AI derivative that can recognise human language and other types of inputs.
The joint venture will see 'equal investments' from the founding entities for the initial working capital requirements to develop the Telco LLM. The platform will aim to help telcos 'improve customer interactions via digital assistants and other innovative AI solutions'.
Through the Telco LLM JV, new business opportunities will be created
Another possibility will be to deploy AI applications tailored to the needs of the founding parties in their respective markets, thus enabling them to reach a global customer base of approximately 1.3 billion across 50 countries.
The Telco LLM will be multilingual including; Korean, English, German, Arabic, and Bahasa among other languages.
What can a telco LLM do?
A LLM built specifically for telcom sector usage could help out with contact center and infrastructure needs. It can 'enhance contact center operations' by generating real-time reference answers for agents during calls and automatically handling post-call tasks.
With everything to do with AI continuing to generate significant traction, industry heavyweights are busy putting the applications that this technology can generate to good use. By being part of a select group in its AI alliances, e& gets to have first shot at AI-backed applications that can yet reshape the telecom sector.
"The Global Telco AI Alliance is well positioned to be an active player in the global AI ecosystem as businesses worldwide are keen to reshape their strategies through AI," said Ryu Young-sang, the SK Telecom CEO.
"Through the Telco LLM JV, new business opportunities will be created, and enhanced levels of customer experiences will be achieved. While heading towards this goal, the Alliance needs to proactively address the social and environmental responsibilities associated with AI by establishing an effective AI governance framework."
