SK Telecom, Korea's largest wireless carrier by the number of subscribers, said Tuesday it aims to introduce a large language model specializing in telecom-related terms as early as June.

The upcoming telecom-specific LLM is developed from general-purpose LLMs such as ChatGPT and Claude. SK Telecom joined hands with global Big Tech firms including OpenAI and Anthropic to develop the LLM.

Telco-specific LLMs are more adjusted to the telecommunications domain and better at understanding user intent compared to general LLMs.

Earlier this month, the company’s CEO Ryu Young-sang hinted that the time for commercializing the telco-specific LLM will likely be within the year. Eric Davis, vice president of AI tech collaboration at SK Telecom, also previously mentioned that the new LLM would perform about 35 percent better compared to the GPT-4.

The telecom giant has repeated the process of training the model with communication-related data, supervising fine-tuning between general models and custom models, evaluating whether it provides useful answers to inquiries and learning insufficient data to enhance the efficiency and professionalism of its LLM, according to SK Telecom officials.

During the company’s press conference held earlier in the day, Jeong Min-young, vice president of AI platform, said the company expects the telco-specific LLM would reduce the time it takes to perform various key tasks including customer consulting, marketing, legal services and human resources.

After the domestic launch following its development in early June, the company looks to develop multiple LLMs and launch them in other languages globally by taking advantage of the Global Telco AI Alliance.

The GTAA was launched by SK Telecom in Seoul in July last year to develop a telco-specific LLM model and related AI services. Members of the alliance include Deutsche Telekom, e& Group, Singtel Group and SoftBank.

“Since it is never easy for a telecom company to solve various services and problems to provide with one general-purpose LLM, creating various telco-specific LLMs through fine-tuning and model evaluation processes and use according to a situation would be our multi-LLM strategy,” Davis said.

The company also unveiled a new platform called Intelligence Platform to help companies, including telecom carriers, operate customer centers and distribution networks more efficiently.