SK Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, e& (Etisalat and) Group, Singtel and SoftBank Corp are the big names behind the Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA), which this week held its inaugural meeting at MWC 2024 and announced plans to establish a joint venture.
Through the joint venture company, the five companies plan to develop large language models (LLMs) specifically tailored to the needs of telecommunications companies (telcos). The LLMs will be designed to help telcos improve their customer interactions via digital assistants and chatbots.
The goal is to develop multilingual LLMs optimised for languages including Korean, English, German, Arabic and Japanese, with plans for additional languages to be agreed among the founding members.
The joint venture plans to focus on deploying innovative AI applications tailored to the needs of the Global AI Telco Alliance members in their respective markets, enabling them to reach a global customer base of approximately 1.3 billion across 50 countries.
The group explains that compared to general LLMs, telco-specific LLMs are more attuned to the telecommunications domain and better at understanding user intent. By making it easier for telcos to deploy high-quality generative AI models swiftly and efficiently, telco-specific LLMs are expected to help accelerate AI transformation of various telco business and services, including customer service.
The LLMs are currently being optimised. Telcos' customer service data is used to fine-tune the model for telco-specific questions. This targeted training ensures the LLM understands the unique language and needs of telecom operators, paving the way for enhanced, personalised, and efficient customer experiences.
The joint venture company will be established before the end of this year.
