Let’s go back to November 2022 when a little something called ChatGPT came to fruition and has since been the talking point of most conversations related to generative AI. (For good reason though. People utilize this tool for fun while, in the business world, it is used to make money.)
But ChatGPT isn’t the only tool available out there. To name a few, there is Bing AI, Bard and Anthropic’s Claude.
Claude, called a competitor of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is a next-generation AI assistant based on Anthropic’s research into training helpful, honest and harmless AI systems. It is capable of various conversational and text processing tasks while maintaining a high degree of reliability and predictability.
What makes Anthropic (and Claude) different is Anthropic’s approach to generative AI. It focuses on creating “constitutional AI.” These are AI models whose responses in training are graded according to a specific ethically based ruleset. The main purpose is to minimize the harmfulness of generative AI.
Recognizing Anthropic’s approach (which is different from OpenAI), South Korea’s SK Telecom, or SKT, made the decision to invest in Anthropic to create a large language model, or LLM, that would match its ambition to transform the telco industry. With that, Anthropic raised an additional $100 million from SKT. SKT decided on this large-scale investment following its Series C investment in Anthropic in May.
“SKT has ambitions to use AI to transform the telco industry,” Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. “We’re combining our AI expertise with SKT’s industry knowledge to build an LLM that is customized for telcos. We see industry specific LLMs as having high potential to create safer and more reliable deployments of AI technology.”
By combining Anthropic's advanced AI technology (including the Claude assistant) with SKT's expertise in telecommunications and Korean language LLMs, the partnership aims to create a customized model capable of supporting multiple languages — Korean, English, German, Japanese, Arabic and Spanish. This tailored model will address various industry-specific needs within the telco sector, spanning customer service, marketing, sales and interactive consumer applications.
The collaboration allows telcos to bypass the time-consuming process of developing LLMs from scratch, granting them access to a high-performing model that outperforms general models available in the market.
“By combining our Korean language-based LLM with Anthropic’s strong AI capabilities, we expect to create synergy and gain leadership in the AI ecosystem together with our global telco partners,” Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT.
The next step, once the model is fine-tuned, is to integrate it into the Telco AI Platform. This platform, spearheaded by the Global Telco AI Alliance, which includes SKT, Deutsche Telekom (News - Alert), e& and Singtel, serves as the cornerstone for pioneering AI services in the telecommunications sector, encompassing not only advancements for existing services but also digital assistants and comprehensive super apps offering an extensive array of functionalities.
By incorporating a tailored version of the Claude assistant, each alliance member gains the rapid and efficient capability to create and deploy services and applications that cater specifically to their individual markets and customer requirements.
With this round, Anthropic continues to be among the highest-funded startups in the AI space, with over $1.5 billion raised. This includes the money raised in May – $450 million in Series C funding led by Spark Capital.
Jared Kaplan, Anthropic's co-founder and chief science officer, will oversee the project and will be responsible for overseeing customization efforts and the overall product roadmap.
Be part of the discussion about the latest trends and developments in the Generative AI space at Generative AI Expo, taking place February 13-15, 2024, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Generative AI Expo covers the evolution of GenAI, featuring conversations focused on its cross-industry potential and how the technology is already being used to create new opportunities for businesses to improve operations, enhance customer experiences, and create new growth opportunities.
Edited by
Alex Passett
