ESTsoft (CEO Chung Sang-won), a company specializing in AI services, announced on the 25th that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with digital healthcare company Shinhan Cubeon (CEO Lee Yong-beom) to produce AI virtual humans specialized in healthcare and to develop IP and create content with them.
Shinhan Cubeon, ESTsoft's partner in the agreement, is a subsidiary of Shinhan Life and the first digital healthcare specialist established in the life insurance industry, with capital of KRW 20 billion.
The agreement extends ESTsoft's AI virtual human business into healthcare, after education, news, entertainment and exhibitions.
The signing ceremony was held at ESTsoft's headquarters in Seocho-gu, Seoul, attended by ESTsoft CEO Chung Sang-won, Shinhan Cubeon CEO Lee Yong-beom and others from both companies.
At the ceremony the two companies agreed to jointly develop AI virtual humans specialized in healthcare and collaborate on IP development and content production. Specifically, they will produce an AI virtual trainer for 'Howfit', the AI home training app service Shinhan Cubeon operates, and create lecture content with it.
Howfit provides lecture videos while using AI to recognize the user's movements and give feedback on their exercise; through this agreement the two companies will launch a new class combining ESTsoft's AI virtual humans with Shinhan Cubeon's own technology. They also agreed to conduct public relations and marketing for the jointly developed AI virtual humans and content together, making full use of their own platforms — ALYac and ALTools for ESTsoft, Howfit for Shinhan Cubeon.
The two companies also agreed to introduce several AI virtual humans to which ESTsoft holds exclusive IP rights, for producing a range of healthcare-related content.
Shinhan Cubeon CEO Lee Yong-beom said: "Howfit has just completed a version upgrade and is about to open content from a range of trainers including Pak Se-ri, Hyojin Choi, H1 and Yang Su-bin; we expect this agreement to add AI virtual trainer content unlike anything available elsewhere, giving users a far richer choice," adding, "We will collaborate actively with ESTsoft to bring the content to market as soon as possible."
ESTsoft CEO Chung Sang-won said: "Because ESTsoft's AI virtual human technology works even in dynamic settings, we will move quickly on optimization for healthcare and bring forward commercialization," adding, "Working with Shinhan Cubeon we will make full use of the IP we develop ourselves and the several IPs to which we hold exclusive rights, to increase the usefulness of AI virtual humans in the healthcare market."
The virtual human market ESTsoft is pursuing as a new AI business has enormous growth potential and is drawing worldwide attention. Global market research firm Emergen Research has forecast that the global virtual human market will grow to USD 527.58 billion by 2030.