Refer Report
The domestic search market is being reorganized into a competitive structure centered on ‘conversational search’. Nate was the first domestic portal to launch a conversational service using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Naver introduced ‘Q’, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based search service.
SK Telecom
The company has also decided to jointly develop an AI search engine with an American search unicorn company.
On the 4th, SK Telecom held a joint press conference with Perplexity at its headquarters and announced its ambition to lead the change to a conversational search paradigm. At the press conference that day, Perplexity co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas attended in person and introduced the AI conversational search engine.
SKT Collaborates with U.S. Search Startup… Predicts “Paradigm Shift”
Perplexity is an AI startup founded in 2022 by CEO Srinivas, an OpenAI alumnus. It is a unicorn company that provides a conversational search engine based on generative AI and provides services in over 50 countries around the world. This search engine processes over 230 million search requests every month.
SK Telecom invested $10 million in Perplexity last June. Perplexity will also invest in SK Telecom’s subsidiary ‘Global AI Platform Corporation’ located in Silicon Valley. The mutual investment between the two companies is intended to be a broad collaboration encompassing not only AI business and services but also technological cooperation.
The Global AI Platform Corporation plans to launch a pilot version of its ‘AI Agent’ (PAA) in the US market within the year. PAA acts as a kind of personal assistant that connects the most appropriate service based on the user’s intention. It uses a multi-LLM method that utilizes multiple large language models (LLM) in appropriate places.
For example, if you ask, “Where is a good restaurant in Seoul that you can introduce to foreigners?”, PAA will determine that a search is necessary. It will then connect you to useful search partners, such as Perplexity, among many other LLMs, and present the results.
SK Telecom also decided to jointly develop an AI search engine optimized for Korea with Perplexity through its self-developed AI personal assistant ‘Adot’. The goal is to provide results optimized for the domestic Internet search environment and culture. SK Telecom will provide Korean data and cultural content, and Perplexity will be in charge of fine-tuning the search engine.
CEO Srinivas said, “The Korean market is attractive because of its fast communication network and infrastructure, and Korean users are particularly familiar with AI services such as Adot.” He added, “Through this collaboration, Korean customers will be able to experience an innovative search service that will allow them to search while conversing with AI like a person.”
In fact, the number of Adot subscribers exceeded 5 million as of the end of last month. This is a significant increase from the end of last year, when it had about 3.2 million subscribers.
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SK Telecom is also offering a promotion to secure early users. SK Telecom customers can use ‘Perplexity Pro’, a paid search service provided by Perplexity on mobile and PC for free for one year, worth about 290,000 won per year. SK Telecom plans to send out messages on how to use Perplexity Pro starting today.
The domestic and international search market is rapidly being reorganized into conversational search. In particular, in Korea, Naver unveiled Q, a generative AI search service based on the large-scale AI HyperClova X, in September last year. It is ahead of Google, which introduced the search service ‘AI Overview’ using the AI model Gemini in May.
Nate’s attempt to launch a chatbot service utilizing OpenAI’s ChatGPT also received attention at one time. Although it was different in form from ‘Q’ or ‘AI Overview’, it was the first case of generative AI search attempted by a domestic portal. Nate introduced a generative AI service as a pilot by creating an ‘AI Chat’ item at the top of the portal in May of last year.
According to global market research firm Markets and Markets, the conversational AI market is expected to grow from $13.2 billion this year to $49.9 billion in 2030, representing an average annual growth rate of 24.9%.
Yoo Young-sang, CEO of SK Telecom, said, “As the recent rapid development of AI is shaking up the global search market landscape, we expect that the investment and service partnership with Perplexity will greatly contribute to securing leadership in the AI ecosystem by enhancing SK Telecom’s AI search competitiveness.”
Kim Dae-young, Hankyung.com reporter kdy@hankyung.com
Source: korean