• SK Telecom already describes itself as an AI company
• Now it has teamed up with OpenAI, the developer of generative AI platform ChatGPT

SK Telecom (SKT), a self-styled AI company, has added to its long list of AI company collaborations by striking a partnership with OpenAI, the developer of the popular and groundbreaking generative AI (GenAI) platform ChatGPT. 

The partnership was announced following the opening (on 10 September) of OpenAI’s Korean office. “OpenAI’s full-scale entry into Korea stems from Korea’s emergence as a ‘full-stack AI nation,’ boasting robust AI infrastructure, government policy support, and a high level of technological acceptance among its citizens,” noted SKT in this announcement (in Korean). 

As part of the partnership, SKT is launching a ChatGPT promotion, giving customers two months of ChatGPT Plus – the subscription-based version of the solution that provides faster responses, priority access to new features, and other improvements compared to the free version – for free with any one-month subscription. 

Andy Brown, OpenAI’s head of business for Asia Pacific, stated: “OpenAI believes that AI will have a greater positive impact on Korean society as a whole. We hope that this joint marketing with SKT will make ChatGPT more accessible to more people and allow them to experience the value of AI in their daily lives.”

The partners are not new to each other: They jointly hosted a Global AI Hackathon in 2023, and have been “conducting research on generative AI for industrial innovation, including manufacturing AI, as founding members of the MIT GenAI Impact Consortium since February of this year,” stated SKT. 

The Korean telco plans to explore further collaboration with OpenAI in various areas related to consumer and enterprise AI services. 

Lee Jae-shin, head of SKT’s AI growth strategy division, stated: “We are delighted to showcase marketing synergy based on the trust we have built with OpenAI, a global AI leader. We will expand our customer-centred AI ecosystem by strengthening global cooperation and self-reliance through a two-track approach."

Notable among SKT’s other AI partnerships are those with Anthropic, in which it has invested and with which it is developing a large language model (LLM) that is optimised for telcos, and Perplexity, with which it has developed a personal AI agent for international markets such as the US. And, of course, SKT is working closely with AI infrastructure tech giant Nvidia on its AI infrastructure developments and its GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) offering.    

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV