SK Telecom (CEO Yoo Young-sang) is challenging a super-large AI model with its own LLM technology.

On the 24th, SKT released its self-developed large-scale language model (LLM) 'AX (Adot X) 3.1' to the global open source community Hugging Face, thereby taking the lead in securing domestic AI.

AX 3.1 is a model designed and trained from scratch based on 34 billion (34B) parameters, and is characterized by significantly improved code generation and mathematical problem solving performance compared to the existing AX 3.0.

The model lineup released this time consists of a total of four models, including two AX 3.1 Standard and Light models and two AX 4.0 Standard and Light models based on large-scale pre-training (CPT·Continuous Pre-Training).

All models are distributed under an open-source license that allows free academic research and commercial use, allowing developers and researchers to download weights and source code from HuggingFace and use them immediately.

AX 3.1 (34B) is less than half the size of AX 4.0 (72B), but it achieved 69.2 points in the KMMLU (Korean Massive Multitask Language Understanding) benchmark, showing about 88% of the performance of 4.0 (78.3 points).

CLIcK (Cultural and Linguistic Intelligence in Korea), which evaluates Korean culture and language context, It scored 77.1 points, which is 90% of 4.0 (85.7 points), proving its excellent efficiency despite being a lightweight model.

SK Telecom has formed a consortium for the 'Independent AI Foundation Model Project' hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT, leveraging its 'full-stack AI' capabilities that link semiconductors, models, data, and services.

Around 10 organizations, including game company Krafton, mobility data company FortyDot, NPU specialist Rebellion, AI agent Liner, data stability technology company SelectStar, and researchers from Seoul National University and KAIST, are participating, adding synergy to the development of a domestic independent foundation model.

In addition, SK Group companies such as SK Hynix, SK Innovation, and SKB, as well as K-AI Alliance members Moloco, Cmes, Gauss Labs, and Scatter Lab, submitted letters of intent to use the AX model, contributing to the expansion of the domestic AI ecosystem. The consortium plans to take the lead in implementing Korean-style sovereign AI by distributing AX-based models as open source to major domestic companies and research institutes in the future.

SK Telecom plans to begin full-scale research on the 'Omni-Modal' ultra-large AI model that integrates and learns multimodal data such as text, images, voices, and videos, and a new processing structure that surpasses Transformer.

Kim Tae-yoon, SK Telecom Foundation Model Manager, said, “We will secure global AI competitiveness through a consortium based on a full-stack AI value chain and lead the era of Korean sovereign AI.”