KT and Amazon come together for voice assistance services

KT Corp, the South Korean telecom provider, has partnered with American tech giant Amazon.com Inc. to offer a Dual AI service. The telecom provider is introducing a new service on its AI speakers with which the customers can enjoy Amazon’s voice assistant. To meet the demand for English education, KT rolled out the new service on Thursday. 

KT’s GiGA Genie speakers will be incorporating Dual Brain AI service, which will have Amazon’s Alexa virtual voice. The service will be supporting both English and Korean languages. 

When customers call ‘Alexa,’ the speakers will offer English voice assistance. Similarly, calling ‘Genie’ will allow customers to continue enjoying the Korean voice assistance. 

Through Amazon’s Alexa, the company plans to offer inclusive services such as news and information, radio streaming and Fox. Around 130000 Alexa-only service apps and around 140000 IoT devices have been linked to the newly updated KT speakers. 

The company has made the service available in 3.1 million GiGa Genie 3 devices starting today. The user access will also be provided to global content, including TedTalks and CNN. Additionally, it will also be accessible on Audible Inc.’s digital audiobooks. 

Along with Amazon’s voice assistant service, KT has introduced some additional features on its devices where a new card feature has been installed. With this, customers can view information on a TV screen when they connect it to the speaker. In the AI speaker market, the new feature will give the telecom operators a competitive advantage over others. 

The company held an online press conference where Lee Hong-Chul, vice president of the AI/BigData Planning Department, spoke to the media. “Our point of differentiation is that we provide English text and images up on the screen to provide easy access to education, entertainment and information not just vocally but also visually.” 

Currently, KT has direct competition from Korea’s SK Telecom. In January 2021, SK had come up with its AI-powered model, NUGU Candle SE, having Alexa’s voice assistant. 

Along with the Dual Brain AI, there are discussions between KT and Amazon to introduce multi-cloud services on KT’s Cloud platforms.