Global tech giants woo Korea as emerging generative AI market

[Photo by Park Hyung-ki]

Global tech giants are tapping the South Korean market to build presence in the generative artificial intelligence (AI) industry that has been gaining worldwide traction for its potential growth and application.

U.S. Google LLC and Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT announced Wednesday that they will jointly hold the “Korea Artificial Intelligence Week: AI for Korea 2023” from July 13 to 15.

The event strives to share the latest AI technology unveiled at I/O 2023 in Silicon Valley in the U.S. last month with the Korean industries, academia, and research institutes. It also aims to promote technology cooperation between Korea and the U.S.

Google plans to hold similar developer events in Japan, China, and India, but sources note that the Korea event will be the only one focusing on AI.

Scott Beaumont, president of Google Asia Pacific, was in town on Wednesday to examine domestic business and regulatory trends ahead of the event that is being held for the first time in Korea.

The Artificial Intelligence Week will consist of a variety of experiential programs, ranging from introduction to the latest technologies including generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and clouds to demonstration sessions, and hands-on workshops attended by Korean companies.

Key Google experts from home and abroad as well as the head office are known to be delivering keynote speeches and attending various technical sessions.

Google has recently installed a large number of new, generative AI-based features in its cloud. Observers note that the event next month will also feature related technologies in collaboration with domestic companies.

[Courtesy of Naver]

Korea’s platform giant Naver Corp., in the meantime, is known to be disconcerted by Google’s move as it is also planning to release “HyperCLOVA X,” the company’s own upgraded next-generation LLM model, as early as next month.

Naver has been aiming to lead the local generative AI market, with the thought that a local service should take the lead over a foreign one.

Foreign companies are at the forefront in the local business-to-business (B2B) cloud market but the generative AI can be an area where domestic players can expand their pie.

OpenAI Inc., the developer of ChatGPT, is also eyeing on Korea.

Its CEO Sam Altman and other key executives plan to visit Korea on Friday for a dialogue with Korean startups, developers, and entrepreneurs that will be hosted jointly by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and Softbank Ventures Asia Corp.

OpenAI earlier unveiled a plug-in that allows external developers to install their applications for ChatGPT. Many domestic developers such as Upstage and Speakeasy Labs Inc. have joined the ChatGPT ecosystem and the startup industry is looking forward to new business opportunities ahead of OpenAI’s expansion in Korea.

“Attention must be given to the recent moves of key figures at Microsoft Corp., OpenAI, and Google that visited Korea and met with officials from the government and the National Assembly and promoted their AI technology and cloud services to the public in large scale,” said an unnamed high-ranking official from the domestic information technology (IT) industry.

“This suggests that they are especially focusing on the Korean market as it is one of the few countries that possesses AI technology, and this may be a big threat to Naver.”

Earlier at its I/O developer conference, Google announced that its new AI chatbot Bard would be available in Korean.