• SK Telecom continues to advance its AI strategy
• It has launched an AI-enabled voice phishing prevention service in South Korea
• And it is hunting for cutting-edge startups to participate in its AI accelerator programme

South Korea’s SK Telecom (SKT), ever keen to position itself as an AI company, has launched new AI-enabled fraud prevention services and unveiled an AI startup competition that will further its engagement with emerging developer talent.   

The company, which last year unveiled a new corporate structure to help it capitalise on its primary growth opportunities of AI and communications services, has already shown that its AI focus is paying off and is constantly seeking to push the boundaries of what a digital service provider can bring to the market – see SK Telecom’s AI focus appears to be paying off.

Now SKT has developed an AI-based anomaly detection integrated service based on its AI-enabled ScamVanguard cybersecurity technology and applied it to the voice service of its personal AI agent application Adot (A.) and to Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK)’s voice phishing platform. 

According to SKT, the anomaly detection service is the first in South Korea to link communication information and financial data: The service analyses customers’ exposure to voice phishing and risk level in real time, and can be used for preemptive responses, such as blocking transfers and withdrawals. To improve the detection capabilities of the service, SKT enhanced ScamVanguard with four AI applications – AI bait text detection system, a phishing attempt chat detection system, AI-enabled voice phishing call pattern analysis, and a ‘real-name analysis’ AI function that detects whether a fraudster has attempted to authenticate a transaction using someone else’s identity. 

For Industrial Bank of Korea, SKT installed its anomaly detection system into its financial customer protection enhancement solution, dubbed SurPASS, and applied it to the bank’s monitoring system to help thwart  identity theft and voice phishing. According to SKT, the bank prevented 26 voice phishing incidents and saved approximately 590m won ($400,000) in financial losses through a preliminary test conducted for about two weeks prior to the official introduction of the solution.

For its Adot personal assistant users, SKT has applied the anomaly detection solution to the Ai assistant’s voice service to provide warning messages for phone calls received from numbers suspected of voice phishing.

SKT says that over the past month, it has provided warning messages for about 190,000 phone calls from suspected voice phishing numbers and is detecting them and warning users in advance of voice phishing phone numbers calling, pretending to be credit card delivery numbers. 

Lee Jong-min, head of SK Telecom’s Future R&D, stated in this announcement (in Korean): “This is a technology that focuses on precisely analysing voice phishing patterns with AI, predicting and responding to financial fraud risks in real time, and minimising customer damage. We plan to develop this into a more sophisticated and advanced integrated anomaly detection solution by fusing telecommunications and financial phishing information in the future.”

Hunting for AI startups

In an effort to discover the next AI service breakthrough, SKT is to hold a competition for emerging talent, with the winners gaining access to the company’s AI Startup Accelerator programme: 15 startups will be selected following a competition process that runs until 9 May.  

SKT’s accelerator programme provides startups with a customised six-month engagement that includes mentoring and seminars, the provision of business cooperation opportunities with SKT, mentoring and investment review from venture capital partners and participation in demonstration days and other external events.  

Over the past two years, SKT has nurtured 30 AI startups, with 10 of the 15 teams selected last year currently carrying out a total of 16 collaborative projects with the South Korean telco. 

In a separate announcement, SKT noted that the K-AI Alliance, which SKT formed two years ago with the aim of “conquering the global AI market”, now has 30 members, up from just seven at its inception. 

According to SKT, the 30 companies are conducting business based on AI technology in various fields, such as manufacturing, advertising, logistics, robots, datacentres, defence, media and healthcare, in 31 cities in 13 countries around the world. “SKT expects that through cooperation with member companies of the K-AI Alliance, it will be able to achieve the same effect as having approximately 3,000 AI research personnel,” the operator noted. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV