Samsung Electronics inked a partnership with the Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences for access to telecommunication-related academic papers to use in the training of its artificial intelligence program, the company said on Friday.

Samsung Executive President Cheun Kyung-whoon leading Samsung Research signed the agreement with Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences President Hong Een-kee at the company's research and development campus in Seoul on Thursday.

"This is the first step of a meaningful collaboration between a global IT company and an academic association," Cheun said. "Samsung Electronics will continue to expand cooperation with academic associations in various fields in the future, and strive to develop the best technology."

Minister of Science and ICT Lee Jong-ho called the agreement a "social contribution project" to enhance the competitiveness of Korea's generative AI industry.

Under the agreement, the KICS will supply Samsung with 20,000 academic papers to be used to train Samsung Gauss, the generative AI model the tech giant introduced in November.

The papers covering various areas of the telecommunication sector include text, formulas, graphs and figures based on facts, so will be reliable source of data for training the AI model, Samsung said.

The company said it will also utilize the academic papers for reference in its development of next-generation telecommunication technology.

As global tech giants are competing head-on to cement their positions in the burgeoning AI market, Samsung also introduced the AI model to enhance the efficiency of its Galaxy smartphones and other devices, according to the company.

Among its main functions is Samsung Gauss Language, a generative language model that can be used to compose emails, summarize documents and translate content. Two other functions are Samsung Gauss Code and Samsung Gauss Image, all serving different functions to offer new user experiences of Samsung's products, the tech giant said.

KICS is the largest academic association for information and communication technology. It was founded in 1974 and has contributed to bolstering domestic industry, according to Samsung.