LG CNS, the information technology services unit of South Korea’s LG Group, said Thursday that it is spinning off its in-house venture Danbee, a developer of smart chatbot systems powered by artificial intelligence.

Danbee was established as an in-house venture in January 2017 with just four employees. It was able to develop, test and perfect new chatbot technologies using LG CNS resources, while being given independent decision-making rights, LG said.

After a sufficient trial-and-error period and notable achievements, LG CNS said it decided the venture was ready to go independent and further grow on its own. It’s the first time for the firm to spin off an in-house venture.

Following the spinoff, LG CNS will focus on the traditional task of developing chatbot service systems for large enterprise clients, while Danbee will take charge of getting more third-party developers to utilize its open chatbot builder platform, also named Danbee.

Using Danbee, developers without extensive knowledge of artificial intelligence can set human-chatbot interaction scenarios using the cloud infrastructure of Amazon Web Services. It currently connects with six mobile messengers including KakaoTalk, Facebook and Telegram.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)