KT's TV AI Agent Hits 2M Daily Users in South Korea

Seoul, South Korea - KT (NYSE: KT) said on Thursday its television-based artificial intelligence agent has reached 2 million daily users, moving from traditional command-based TV interactions to conversational exchanges.

The Genie TV AI agent, launched in July 2024, allows users to engage in dialogue with their television sets rather than issuing simple voice commands, according to keyword analysis data released by KT.

User interaction data showed that family-related terms, including "mom," "dad," and "love," appeared repeatedly across all age groups, the company said.

Greetings and emotional expressions such as "good morning," "good night," "thank you," and "I love you" each accumulated tens of thousands of instances.

Conversation patterns varied by age demographic, KT said. Users in their 20s frequently used keywords related to relationships and daily life, while those in their 30s and 40s employed terms associated with child-rearing.

Users aged 50 and above used more hobby- and health-related keywords.

The data reflected monthly keyword trends that aligned with seasonal events and social interests. 

Air conditioning dominated queries in July, baseball teams Hanwha and Kia appeared frequently in August, and television programs and sports figures emerged in subsequent months through December.

Usage peaked at 8 a.m. and 7 p.m., with users averaging more than three interactions per day, the company said.

The service showed adoption among elderly users and children, demographics with lower mobile AI service usage rates, KT said. The voice-based television interface does not require smartphone operation or text input.

Elderly users showed higher proportions of lifestyle and health-related conversations, while children appeared to use the AI for play and conversation rather than information searches, the analysis showed.

KT expanded the system in November 2024 beyond the Microsoft Azure OpenAI model to include SOTA K, creating a multi-large-language-model framework, the company said.

The company developed an intent classification engine that analyzes user questions and selects the appropriate model.

The Genie TV AI agent operates on Genie TV set-top boxes 3 and 4, as well as the Genie TV all-in-one soundbar.

KT said it plans to expand deployment to approximately 5 million units by year-end and introduce a multimodal model for image and audio recognition.