Businesses in South Korea are quick to adapt using technology. Many businesses started to set up self-ordering monitors, which customers embraced. Now many industries are increasingly using AI technology to transform customer engagement. Conversational AI in Korea is one of the hottest sectors, and startups are jumping in. The global conversational AI market is expected to reach $19 billion by 2026.
Conversational AI technology relies heavily on big data and natural learning processing (NLP). NLP, in particular, has undergone unprecedented advances over the past few years. The future next-generation language AI is expected to reach mass adoption, which has the potential to generate billions of dollars of value and transform industries. Therefore, the South Korean government said it would invest heavily in AI technology and support AI startups in Korea.
Top Conversational AI Startups in Korea
DEEPBRAIN AI
DEEPBRAIN AI is a Korean startup researching and developing conversational AI technology. They offer a wide range of AI-powered customer service products. However, their specialty is in synthetic humans that can respond to natural language questions. They use AI technology to offer video and speech synthesis and chatbot solutions to enterprise customers such as MBN, Metro News, LG, and KB Kookmin Bank. They showcased their AI human-embedded “AI Kiosks” at CES 2023. It leveraged the power of AI with its human-based AI avatars.
AI Human Avatars
To create AI Human avatars, DEEPBRAIN first captures a video of a human model in a studio and then uses AI to analyze the model’s lip, mouth, and head movement. Therefore, it is great for creating virtual AI bankers, teachers, and even news anchors. Their revenue in 2022 was $7 million due to the continued demand of COVID. Moreover, Deepbrain AI has raised over $50 million, led by Korea Development Bank. The startup is currently valued at $180 million.
“There is only a very limited number of companies both locally and globally with high-quality deep learning-based voice synthesis technology. We will achieve excellent performances in diversified business domains with our competitive technology, which is at par with those of global companies,” said CEO of Deepbrain AI, Eric Jang.
Check out their video below:
Skelter Labs
Conversational AI in Korea – Skelter Labs licenses its AI technology to companies and corporations. They specialize in vocal vision, conversational recognition, and context recognition. They have expanded outside of Korea and into Japan and Southeast Asia. Furthermore, Skelter Labs focuses on conversation, including speech, NLU, and Hyper-personalization. Therefore, they target industries like manufacturing, customer service, advertising, and marketing.
The startup has raised over $32 million in funding from Kakao Brain, KDB Bank, Korea Investment and Securities, Golden Gate Ventures, and Kakao Ventures. In 2023, they will focus on the manufacturing market, customer operations, and consumer marketing.
Partnership with INNOCEAN Worldwide
Skelter Labs partnered with one of the biggest marketing agencies in Korea INNOCEAN worldwide. It was the first case of a joint project between an advertising company and an AI company in Korea. Therefore, they will work together on a data Ad-tech training program, developing smart wearable devices, implementing customized vehicle test systems, and building an Ad campaign automation platform. Furthermore, they will work together to expand the functionality of Smart Sunglasses by utilizing the core AI technology of Skelter Labs.
“AI is a life-changing opportunity for Skelter Labs. I think our current projects will be worth millions of dollars in the future. However, the numbers are now meaningless. Our main priority is developing core AI technology. Money is secondary,” said the CEO of Skelter Labs, Ted Cho.
Scatter Lab
Scatter Lab is one of the few Korean AI startups dealing with interactions between people and machines. It is the developer of mobile application software that aims to humanize interactions between people and AI. Therefore, the focus is on developing open-domain conversation technology that allows AI to communicate freely with people. They aim to create a conversational AI that is indistinguishable from humans. Moreover, they have an exclusive database of 11 billion Korean KakaoTalk chats and 1.5 billion Japanese Line chat messages. Using this data, they created an open-domain chatbot called Luda.
“Our goal is to make Luda the AI that has the most conversations with people in the world, and we’re pursuing our tech and product development with that goal in mind,” said the founder of Scatter Lab, Jongyoun Kim.
Twoblock AI
TwoBlock AI aims to build an AI that can understand a person’s emotions, personality, tastes, and situations when chatting with Koreans. This requires highly deep NLP and conversational AI technology focused on the Korean language. TwoBlock AI has its own Korean Deep NLP model called HanBERT. Therefore they can provide customized models for various NLP/NLG requirements of customers quickly and with high quality. The startup is known for developing AI models quickly and accurately.
MoneyBrain
MoneyBrain offers world-class AI video synthesis technology, which they use to create the most advanced AI that resembles a human. They have cutting-edge video and voice synthesis to create the ultimate conversational AI on the market. Their main product is called SpeakNow, and it is an AI English Tutor. They have already expanded into Japan, China, and Taiwan. However, MoneyBrain does not solely focus on the education industry. MoneyBrain’s conversational AI technology has been implemented in broadcasting services, entertainment, commerce, and mobile industries.
