South Korea’s IT giant Kakao enters global alliance to oversee AI future

Kakao joined the AI Alliance, a global consortium dedicated to promoting open-source artificial intelligence (AI) development, with members including global tech firms Meta and IBM.

The Korean IT giant said Friday it joined the AI Alliance as part of efforts to help create a local AI ecosystem that meets global standards. Kakao is the first Korean company to join the initiative, it added.

Some 100 companies and research institutions have joined it so far, including tech firms like Intel, Meta and IBM.

“We will cooperate with the AI Alliance to create a safe and credible open-source AI ecosystem that meets global standards,” Kim Kyung-hoon, head of Kakao’s AI safety division, said. “As a digital firm, we will constantly endeavor to strengthen AI ethics and meet our social responsibility.”

Kakao in 2018 published the Kakao Algorithm Ethics Charter, the first of its type in the industry. In 2022, it established the “Tech for good committee,” an internal panel of tech officers to assess the ethics of its technologies and their social impact, another first for the industry.