LG AI Research launches Korea's first open-source AI model Exaone 3.0

The AI research arm of LG Corp. released the third generation of its AI model, which will be deployed to affiliates to enhance products and services.

LG AI Research President Bae Kyung-hoon introduces Exaone 2.0 in 2023. [LG CORP.]

LG AI Research launched Korea's first open-source AI model, Exaone 3.0, on Wednesday to expedite its research and contribute to the establishment of an ecosystem for the technology in the country, which is still at a very nascent stage.

The AI-committed think tank of LG Corp. announced Wednesday it has launched the third generation of its AI multimodal model and released an open-source light version.

The latest model, bilingual in Korean and English, will soon be deployed across services and products of LG affiliates later in the year.

The research arm unveiled the model's first version — 1.0 — in 2022 and updated it to version 2.0 last year, differentiated from other AI models by targeting professionals instead of the general public.

Another year of updates has lead the 3.0 version to reduce its inference time by 56 percent, memory usage by 35 percent and operational costs by 72 percent compared to its predecessor, according to the company.

It has studied 60 million cases of professional data related to patents, codes, math and chemical both from home and abroad. It aims to expand the data input to 100 million cases in law, bio, medical, education and foreign language areas by the end of this year.

ChatExaone, based on Exaone 3.0, is can operate in programming languages. [LG CORP.]

Exaone 3.0 is aiming for a soft landing in LG affiliates' services and products before becoming available to the masses.

The affiliates will fine-tune the model to their needs so it can be utilized in the development of products and services.

The beta service of ChatExaone also launched for LG employees on Wednesday.

The service, resembling ChatGPT, will provide answers based on real-time web searches as well as analysis of documents and images.

ChatExaone can also operate in programming languages like the widely used Python in 22 coding apps, and can provide structure query languages even if the input is in standard language.

AI has been at the center of LG's portfolio of its next growth drivers. In 2020, it pledged to invest 3.6 trillion won ($2.6 billion) into the advanced technology by 2026.

"As it is important to create AI that can be used in real-world industries, we plan to strengthen partnerships between LG affiliates and other companies and institutions with Exaone, which is cost-efficient with a specialized performance," said Bae Kyung-hoon, president of LG AI Research.

"In particular, we plan to open source this highly versatile and lightweight model so that academia and research institutes can utilize the latest generative AI technology, contributing to the AI research ecosystem and further enhancing AI competitiveness."

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]