Oracle unveils 'safer version of ChatGPT'

Texas-based software giant Oracle has rolled out a new global cloud computing offering with built-in generative AI, the company announced on Thursday.

Oracle Korea's Managing Director Tom Song speaks at a press event on Thursday in southern Seoul to introduce Oracle's new cloud services with built-in large language models. [ORACLE KOREA]

Texas-based software giant Oracle has rolled out a new global cloud computing offering with built-in generative AI, the company announced on Thursday.

Dubbed Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI, the system designed for enterprises is equipped with two large language models (LLMs) — Meta’s Llama 2 and Cohere, named after Toronto-based AI company Cohere — to address a wide range of businesses in customer service, marketing, product development and cybersecurity.

Just like everyday users utilize ChatGPT or other LLMs to define, analyze and code data, enterprises can turn to OCI Generative AI for help. For instance, in customer service, the models can automatically record and transcribe the phone conversation or collect data on customer feedback for later improvement.

Oracle explains the service as a full-stack tool kit that can help enterprises solve business problems smarter, faster and in a cheaper way.

“When OpenAI’s ChatGPT came out, it was phenomenal, but companies were hesitant to use it because they feared their private data be exposed,” said Oracle Korea’s Managing Director Tom Song, at a press event to introduce the company’s latest services on Thursday in southern Seoul. “Oracle saw the demand right there and dove into development. Our clients utilizing our service can now address business issues such as text generation, summarization and semantic similarity tasks within their own Oracle system without having to reach out to exterior LLMs.

“And of course, Oracle is bound to confidentiality to not to share enterprise data with anyone else, including our own clients,” Song added.

The service, in time, will be able to support some 100 languages and can be utilized in the Oracle Cloud and on-premises in regions where Oracle data centers are established, including Korea.

Oracle currently operates two data centers in Korea, in Seoul and Chuncheon, Gangwon.

The company also released the beta version of OCI Generative AI Agent, which goes a step further than traditional LLMs. This advanced iteration enables agents to autonomously access and train themselves using enterprise data for more sophisticated applications.

“This is possible through Oracle’s Retrieval Augmented Generation [RAG] technology,” Song said. “Basically, think of generative AIs as a really smart university graduate, but when they are rookie employees, they might be clumsy or uncertain of what to do because they are new to the company. Oracle’s RAG technology equipped in this agent will allow it to quickly learn enterprise data and consistently improve its functions as it continuously engages in machine learning.”

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]