[BizLeader] "AI Technology Advancement to Increase Creative Jobs"

Lee Kyung-il, CEO of Saltlux Leading AI Technology Development
"Painters Focus More on Creative Works After the Advent of Cameras"

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyungsoo Park] The American artificial intelligence (AI) research company OpenAI unveiled the language generation AI 'ChatGPT' at the end of last year. Demonstrating performance beyond expectations, it proved the potential for rapid growth in the AI market. OpenAI's corporate value soared from $14 billion a year ago to $29 billion.

Concerns have also grown that as generative AI technology advances, it will replace human labor. Generative AI refers to AI technology that creates new digital images, videos, audio, text, code, and more using algorithms that learn autonomously without human instructions. While traditional AI understood targets by learning data and patterns, generative AI presents new content through comparative learning with existing data.

Complementary Development of Traditional Search Engines and ChatGPT

Amid expected significant changes in the search market, we met Lee Kyung-il, CEO of Saltlux, who has led technology development in the AI field for over 20 years. CEO Lee said, "ChatGPT is likely to develop complementarily with existing search engines," and introduced, "Google's AI Lambda 2 under development is also a GPT model." He added, "ChatGPT acquired language and knowledge through machine learning," and predicted, "It will evolve into a conversational deep Q&A format rather than the traditional method of showing search results." However, CEO Lee explained that even if users obtain desired knowledge through ChatGPT, the process of verification through existing search methods will not disappear anytime soon.

Lee Kyung-il, CEO of Saltlux. Photo by Saltlux

Regarding concerns that AI development will reduce jobs, CEO Lee offered a different perspective. He said, "In the past, people worked on Saturdays, but now there is talk of a four-day workweek," adding, "Until now, the reduction in working hours was the result of introducing robots into production sites." He emphasized, "Working hours will decrease further," and "This will become possible by introducing AI into office environments."

He expects that as robots and AI replace simple labor, creative jobs will increase. CEO Lee explained that since the advent of cameras, painters have been able to produce creative works, and the value of their works has grown.

CEO Lee accumulated software knowledge and experience in natural language processing and artificial intelligence while working as a researcher at LG Central Research Institute and Hyundai Electronics. Later, with the idea of "helping everyone in the world freely communicate knowledge," he founded Sysmeta, the predecessor of Saltlux, in 2000. In 2003, he laid the foundation for Saltlux by merging with Sysmeta. Saltlux supplies core AI and big data technologies and software solutions. It mainly builds AI contact centers, call bots, chatbots using conversational AI, and handles projects related to data collection and analysis. As demand for AI and data analysis increases, Saltlux's scale is also growing.

He introduced, "Saltlux holds 82 registered patents, the largest number domestically related to AI," and "Saltlux's AI data assets, including 14 billion knowledge bases, 4 million language corpora, and 20,000 hours of voice data, are the largest in Asia." This is the result of steady AI technology development since its establishment in 2000. CEO Lee explained, "The R&D expenditure ratio compared to sales in 2021 was 53.6%," and "Until the third quarter of last year, about half of the sales revenue was invested."

Continuous technology development has led to customer trust. Saltlux has supplied AI contact center (AICC) platforms to financial institutions including NH Nonghyup Bank, Woori Bank, and Korea Investment & Securities. Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, LG, Korea Electric Power Corporation, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and Japan's DNP are also among its clients. It provides various solutions ranging from customer service or internal HR and work chatbots to large-scale data collection and prediction supporting important decision-making, real-time market and competitor analysis, and understanding customer voices.

CEO Lee said, "Based on industry-leading technology and business execution experience, we also handle public platforms such as the Presidential Archives, Constitutional Court, Ministry of Government Legislation, and the National Assembly," adding, "Saltlux built 'Goopy,' a national secretary service used by over 20 million people since the early days of electronic government."

Overseas Expansion Led by Metahuman

As AI technology has developed to be used seamlessly in industrial sites, the related market is rapidly growing. Saltlux has set a goal to achieve a corporate value of 1 trillion won by 2025. It is expanding its business overseas beyond Korea and broadening its scope to the business-to-consumer (B2C) market. In March this year, it launched 'Plunit Studio' and 'Metahuman Service' simultaneously in 36 countries. Through Plunit Studio, AI metahumans are created, and metahumans act as personal assistants on the web. They can create and edit videos for lectures, presentations, YouTube broadcasts, show hosts, and advertising models using AI. Since metahumans can operate 24 hours in various languages including Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese, demand is expected to grow rapidly.

CEO Lee said, "At 'CES 2023' recently held, we gained a lot of confidence that our services will be accepted in overseas markets," and "We secured more than 20 local business partner companies." He emphasized, "We operated a Plunit Studio experience zone where over 400 industry insiders experienced virtual human creation over four days," and "At the Saltlux booth, more than 2,000 employees from 45 countries including Amazon, Tesla, and Google, as well as executives from major domestic companies such as SKT, Samsung Electronics, and LG Electronics visited."

Saltlux has been developing the hyper-personalized AI service Goover through its U.S. subsidiary for two years. After AI learns according to the user's interests and purposes, it provides customized information in depth as desired by the user. It is an augmented intelligence service supporting decision-making. It is expected to become a service that saves time and effort among professionals.

Saltlux recorded operating revenue of 16.5 billion won and an operating loss of 5.2 billion won cumulatively through the third quarter of last year. Operating revenue decreased by 7.4% compared to the same period last year. The scale of losses increased. This was the result of increasing research and development costs in preparation for the rapidly approaching AI era. CEO Lee said, "We invested in AI technology development as much as we earned," and expressed expectations, "We will see results as we start paid services this year."