'Tens of Billions Won Spent on "Recommended Search," Startups Also Use It... Upstage Develops "AI Pack"'

LG Uplus Collaborates with Amorepacific, Glorang, and Others
Utilizes 'AI Pack' Solution Instead of Direct Construction, Reducing Costs

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Nahum] Due to the spread of non-face-to-face culture caused by COVID-19, the time and cost spent on content such as online video services (OTT), widely used as a 'lifestyle platform,' and e-commerce are rapidly increasing.

Accordingly, technology that applies functions to find and recommend products or content based on individual data and preferences using artificial intelligence (AI), so-called Seargest (search+suggest) technology, is gaining attention.

While global big tech companies such as AWS, YouTube, and Netflix are competing to develop and introduce this technology to expand sales, domestically, Upstage has attracted attention by developing a no-code based ‘AI Pack’ that makes it easy to introduce search recommendation technology.

According to the industry on the 21st, Upstage recently developed a no-code based ‘AI Pack’ that makes it easy to introduce search recommendation technology and is collaborating with LG Uplus, Amorepacific, Glorang, and others.

Upstage is an AI startup known for being the first domestic company to win double-digit gold medals in Kaggle, centered on members from global big tech companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon, NVIDIA, Meta, and Naver.

The search recommendation technology that Upstage is focusing on is considered a core function that most influences customers' purchases and drives corporate sales growth across various platforms.

‘Search’ is a core value that distinguishes offline and online and is an essential function to find desired information in the ocean of information in the online world. Since the emergence of Amazon, it has continuously grown centered on product search. Domestically, Naver also fully revamped its main screen UI to focus on shopping services in 2019 and introduced Naver Plus Membership, similar to Amazon Prime, from 2020, concentrating on product search.

‘Recommendation’ is also a function used almost everywhere since AI-based recommendations were applied to platforms. Recommendation technology shines wherever customer decision-making is required. YouTube, which has become synonymous with ‘AI algorithms,’ is a representative example. Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer (CPO), said in a New York Times interview last year, "Since introducing AI algorithms to YouTube, total watch time has increased more than 20 times." As the algorithm continuously recommends content or products matching users’ tastes, users stay longer on the platform and purchases increase as a result.

Using the AI Pack, Upstage recently developed AI that analyzes emotional keywords in video content reviews and performs search and recommendation in collaboration with LG Uplus, preparing to apply the service. Upstage is also discussing service improvements with various companies in finance, edutech, and other sectors where AI adoption is highly necessary, beyond commerce and content.

In particular, the AI Pack is attracting attention from companies because it can be used without AI major knowledge. In other words, companies can introduce and maintain AI with only the solution usage fee, not tens of billions of won in construction projects as before, enabling the introduction of search recommendation technology at about 90% reduced cost compared to internal development. Also, by using the ‘Pre-trained model’ developed and updated by Upstage itself, it can secure service-level performance with only about 25% of the data compared to before, allowing client companies to focus their human and internal capabilities on core services.

An Upstage official said, "Through the AI Pack, we will lower the AI application barriers for corporate customers who want to use search recommendation technology and allow customers to focus their capabilities on core services," adding, "Since this technology is used on all platforms, we will further advance it and do our best to improve services across various industries."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.