Restoring Nostalgic Animation with AI... SKT Partners with Daewon Broadcasting

The first collaboration between SKT and Daewon Broadcasting, 'Unimini Pet'. Photo by SKT

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Su-yeon] SK Telecom announced on the 22nd that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Daewon Broadcasting to pioneer the global and Japanese animation content artificial intelligence (AI) remastering market using the 'SUPERNOVA' technology.

SKT's SUPERNOVA is a core technology leading the media business group, one of SKT's five major business sectors. It is a solution that directly improves the quality of media content such as videos, images, or audio based on AI deep learning algorithms.

SUPERNOVA is already being used by MBC and SK Broadband's Internet TV (IPTV) service B tv. In April, SKT signed an agreement with Verimatrix, one of the world's largest content and application security solution providers, to explore entry into the global broadcasting market.

AI remastering refers to a series of processes that use AI media technologies like SUPERNOVA to complete media content restoration work, which traditionally requires a lot of time and effort when done manually, in a short time.

For example, older works produced long ago with SD-level resolution are converted to FHD resolution through AI remastering, while relatively recent new works can be converted from FHD resolution to 4K level, enhancing the video details even further.

Through this business cooperation, Daewon Broadcasting plans to actively market AI remastering using SUPERNOVA to Japanese content providers (CPs) to secure excellent content. SKT plans to achieve tangible results by performing AI remastering work using SUPERNOVA.

As the first case of business cooperation between the two companies, starting with the cute character animation 'Unimini Pet,' various animation contents will be AI remastered and presented to customers through SKT's 'A. tv.'

Lim Jeong-yeon, head of SKT A. (A.Dot) Media, said, "We hope that through this cooperation, SUPERNOVA will take the lead in pioneering the Japanese animation AI remastering market," adding, "We will discover excellent content, refine it to better quality, and provide it to customers through A. tv."