Built with advanced natural language processing and sentiment analysis technologies, ‘A.’ handles different tasks on customers’ smartphones and recommends/plays music or videos that match their preferences.

The AI technology applied to ‘A.’ combines daily conversations based on generative pre-trained transformer 3 (GPT-3) with handling of specific tasks requested by customers.

While having free conversation with ‘A.’, customers can naturally shift to task-oriented dialogue.

SK Telecom says ‘A.’ is still in its open beta stage, admitting it still has room for environment.

The telco expects ‘A.’ to become smarter and more helpful through customer feedback and constant self-learning.

After installing the ‘A.’ app, users can create and customise an AI character that reflects their personalities. They can communicate with the character through conversations or text messages, and ask for information.

Through interconnection with apps like Flo (music), Wavve (OTT), T Map (navigation), T World and T Membership, ‘A.’ allows customers to use a long list of services with their T ID.

T ID is an integrated login ID that lets customers use SK Telecom's services.

Customers can also send text messages, make phone calls, set alarms, manage schedules, and check daily information like weather, news and stock quotes.

The open beta service of ‘A.’ will initially be available to Android smartphone users regardless of their mobile carrier and all services within the app will be provided for free.

SK Telecom is currently working on ‘A.’ for iOS and plans to release the service as soon as possible.

In the second half of this year, SK Telecom plans to add new features to ‘A.’ including ‘My TV’ and games. Other features like English learning, photo management, and concierge/expert will also be added going forward.

SK Telecom also plans to expand the features of ‘A.’ through partnerships with other companies.

This first appeared in the subscription newsletter CommsWire on 17 May 2022.