Samsung Electronics to introduce customized AI service this year

Kye Hyun Kyung, president & chief executive officer of Samsung Electronics’ DS Division gives a lecture to Yonsei University students, in Seoul on June 9. [Photo by Yonhap]

Samsung Electronics Co. will introduce a customized artificial intelligence (AI) service with various functions, such as knowledge search and translation, as early as this year.

According to industry sources on Sunday, the Device Solutions (DS) division, which is in charge of Samsung’s semiconductor business, is developing its own large language model (LLM) at the GPT-3.5 level or higher within the year.

“Depending on how we use generative AI, it can revolutionize what we do,” said Kye Hyun Kyung, president & chief executive officer of Samsung Electronics’ DS Division, in a recent lecture to employees, adding that the company is pushing to introduce customized AI through specialized domestic companies.

The DS division will first launch a basic service in December and then introduce a specialized search service including company knowledge from February next year. Based on this, it aims to support a total of nine fields, including automatic response to business processes such as purchasing and expenses, search for expertise in processes, design, and manufacturing, summary of manufacturing and process data, translation, document creation, recording and summarizing meeting minutes, company analysis, code generation and review, and customer voice response.

In a lecture to Yonsei University students last Friday, Kyung described ChatGPT as “the ultimate intellect.” “The code that a sixth-year engineer can write in 60 minutes, ChatGPT can write and verify in 10 minutes,” he said. “Even if we can’t use it now, we will be able to use it in some way next year.” Even if Samsung restricts the use of externally generated AI like ChatGPT, it means that it will introduce customized AI to support work.

Samsung Electronics has been putting the brakes on its internal use of ChatGPT amid concerns about leaks of company secrets. In March, the DS division took measures such as limiting the number of characters when using ChatGPT after confirming some cases of abuse, including uploading the body of internal emails and entering the entire internal source code.

The Device Experience (DX) division, which is responsible for home appliances and smartphones, banned the use of generative AI on internal PCs last month. This is because the information entered by employees in AI, such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, is likely to be exposed to the outside world.