I am pleased to share the news that Mago (MAGO) has been selected for LG U+’s AI Open Innovation Program ‘Shift 2nd Term.’ (link)
The Shift Program is known as a representative AI innovation program of LG U+, aimed at discovering AI startups with technological capabilities and growth potential, supporting them from technology collaboration with business units to commercialization, and investment linkage.
This selection is also the moment when it was confirmed that the rising demand for voice AI technology in the enterprise market naturally aligns with the technological direction that Mago is pursuing.
💡 What is the Shift Program?
Shift is an open innovation program intensively operated by LG U+, providing various collaborative opportunities to connect AI technologies to real services. The features of this program are as follows.
PoC experiments based on real data
Joint problem definition with working departments
Review of constraints in technology application environments
Review of follow-up investments and long-term business collaborations
In other words, it is closer to a program where the answer is found together in the process of solving real-world problems, rather than just introducing technology.
▶️ Reasons for Mago's Selection
The parts where Mago was positively evaluated in the Shift can be summarized into three main areas.
1) Deep understanding technology based on voice signals
Rather than staying at simple transcription (STT), Mago is reading information that is difficult to interpret only with text, such as emotions, emphasis sections, and speech patterns within voice signals, based on the technology of “analyzing voice as it is.”
This technical characteristic was evaluated as a sufficient differentiator at a time when enterprises need “conversation understanding” beyond summarization.
2) Flexible structure applicable in various environments
In enterprise environments where data security requirements are high, a cloud-based model alone often meets limitations.
Mago was naturally recognized for its compatibility with enterprise environments as it shows no performance degradation in on-premises and on-device environments.
3) Capability to build Voice Understanding Agent
The Voice Understanding Agent that Mago is developing has a structure that integratively analyzes the context, emotions, and intents that text-based AI misses.
This technical capability was also highly evaluated because the need for “interpretable voice AI” is growing in various industries.
🎥 Mago Presentation Video
▶️ Why Voice Understanding Agent now?
In recent corporate environments, expectations for voice AI are changing. There are increasing problems that cannot be solved with accurate STT alone,
and organizations that hold large-scale voice data now feel a stronger need to read emotions and changes and the flow of intent within conversations.
The needs commonly felt in various industries such as customer service, AICC, education, content analysis, and telecommunications fields are as follows:
“A step beyond summarization is needed.”
“I want to analyze emotions or intents together.”
“There are parts difficult to understand with text only.”
Along with this market trend, interest in a team with technology that can structurally interpret conversations is significantly increasing.
▶️ Expectations from Collaboration with LG U+
The part we are most looking forward to in the Shift Program is the experience of finding solutions by directly dealing with accumulated voice data and problems in the field.
In organizations operating large-scale consultations or customer communications, it is common for utilization to be low relative to the amount of data, and Mago expects to tackle difficulties experienced by working units together by focusing on structuring voice data, analyzing emotions and intents, improving AX experiences, etc.
PoC collaboration with LG Uplus is expected to be a great opportunity to deeply verify the actual applicability of voice AI.
▶️ Mago's Aspiration for Voice Understanding Agent
The Voice Understanding Agent that Mago aims to create targets not only simple voice transcription but also understanding the context, emotions, and flow of speech in a conversation. It is hoped to become a foundation for creating new values in corporate decision-making and automation processes.
Through the Shift 2nd term activities, we think it will be possible to broaden the possibilities of voice AI together with LG Uplus.
We will continue to share the ongoing process.