SK Telecom's 'Aster' AI gives meeting reminders and life advice

SK Telecom will launch its AI assistant, Aster, in North America later this year, focusing on life management and execution, while planning global expansion.

Chung Suk-geun, head of SK Telecom’s GPAA Business Division, speaks during a press conference on the sideline of CES 2025 in Las Vegas on Tuesday. [SK TELECOM]

LAS VEGAS — SK Telecom will make a bold statement in the North American market by introducing its AI assistant, Aster, in the latter half of this year.

“It is a very tough challenge for a domestic company to develop its own AI service for the global market,” said Chung Suk-geun, head of SK Telecom’s GPAA Business Division at a news conference on the sideline of CES 2025 in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

“Scale is vital for an AI service because it requires significant investment. We concluded that creating an AI service tailored only to several tens of millions of people in Korea holds little meaning.”

Aster aims to deliver value through “life management” by helping modern users efficiently handle their busy lives. Its core features lie in planning, executing, reminding and providing advice to the users.

“While AI models like ChatGPT focus on providing answers, Aster also handles execution,” Chung noted.

Chung emphasized that Aster leverages the strengths of a telecom company by bundling various services according to user preferences and crafting pricing plans. To achieve this, Aster will partner with multiple third-party agents.

Aster will launch in North America in the latter half of 2025 [SK TELECOM]

Deploying an AI chatbot search service from Perplexity is one of the third-party partnerships SK Telecom is pushing for.

Ultimately, Chung envisions Aster as a platform where Big Tech firms requiring substantial AI demand, telecom companies offering affordable AI services and third-party developers seeking new opportunities can converge.

“Our goal is to establish market influence so that Big Tech views us as a valuable partner,” Chung said.

“For now, we will focus on addressing users’ pain points. We are conducting extensive research to determine what type of AI can best meet customer needs, rather than concentrating on numbers and sales targets.”

Starting next year, SK Telecom plans to expand the service to other countries.

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