According to the Korea Economic News, two South Korean tech giants — Samsung Electronics and Naver Corp. — have reached a partnership agreement to develop a generative AI platform for enterprise applications to compete with global AI tools such as ChatGPT.
Naver, South Korea’s largest online and search engine operator, will reportedly obtain semiconductor-related data from Samsung to create a generative AI, which will then be further refined by Samsung. The AI tool will support the Korean language and will first be used by Samsung’s Device Solutions (DS) division, which includes its semiconductor business. The two companies plan to launch the AI tool as early as October and, after testing, expand its use to other Samsung businesses, including the Device Experience (DX) division, which is responsible for smartphones and home appliances, the sources said. Through this partnership, Samsung will have an in-house AI tool that will improve the company’s productivity while preventing the disclosure of sensitive trade secrets by using platforms developed by other companies, and Naver will improve its chances of penetrating the global enterprise AI market.
A key advantage of the Samsung-Naver AI chatbot is its support for the Korean language. Naver Cloud, Naver’s artificial intelligence division, said in February that it would launch a new hyperscale AI platform, HyperCLOVA X, in July, an upgrade to its earlier version, HyperCLOVA, to create a Korean-friendly AI ecosystem. Naver said HyperCLOVA X learns 6,500 times more Korean words than ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, and will understand and respond to Korean questions better and more accurately than English-based tools.
Kyung Gye Hyun, president of Samsung’s semiconductor business, recently said via its social networking service, “In developed countries, AI data is mainly processed in English. Countries that do not speak English, such as South Korea, are marginalized in terms of utilizing generative AI tools.” Naver CEO Choi Soo Eun also said that one of the company’s main business goals is to provide customer-centric services that better solve the problems facing Korean businesses. naver said in early February that it will launch a beta version of SearchGPT, an AI-based search engine, in the first half of this year. naver plans to expand its business by combining its existing collaboration business services, including LINE Naver plans to make its enterprise-oriented generative AI tools available globally by the end of this year by combining its existing collaboration business services, including LINE WORKS and NAVER WORKS, with HyberCLOVA X.
Samsung and Naver also plan to launch AI chips later this year to compete with GPU offerings from companies like Nvidia, among others. Last December, the two Korean companies said they were working on next-generation AI chips optimized for hyperscale AI platforms. When completed, these AI chips will replace the Nvidia chips currently used in Naver’s AI platform. According to market research firm Gartner, the global AI chip market is expected to grow from $23 billion in 2020 to $70 billion by 2025.
It was previously reported that earlier this month, Samsung said it banned employees in its DX division from using ChatGPT, Google Bard, Bing AI chatbots and other generative AI tools on its desktop computers, tablets and smartphones. Samsung, the world’s largest maker of memory chips and smartphones, is the latest major South Korean company to publicly express concerns about generative AI tools and privacy. In South Korea, SK Hynix Inc., the world’s second-largest memory chip maker, and POSCO Holdings Inc., the country’s largest steelmaker, have banned their employees from using generative AI chatbots at work. Some Wall Street banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. have also banned or restricted the use of ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms.
