ESTsoft is moving into the senior care industry in earnest with AI human services, having secured the IP of singer Tae Jin-Ah and launched an age-friendly city project with Gimhae City.
ESTsoft (CEO Chung Sang-won), a company specializing in AI services, announced on the 15th that it has won the 'Smart Village Rollout and Expansion Program' as part of a consortium, building smart senior centers in Gimhae City with AI humans. This accelerates the senior care business ESTsoft has been pursuing to diversify its AI human business model.
The project was created by Gimhae City ahead of its entry into a super-aged society, and centers on bringing AI human-based remote smart services into senior centers — the main gathering places and welfare facilities for the elderly population.
This year ESTsoft entered the senior care business in earnest to diversify the business model for its AI humans. It recently put considerable effort into securing well-known IP to strengthen its competitiveness, and as a result successfully obtained exclusive IP rights to an AI human of Tae Jin-Ah, one of Korea's leading trot singers.
To deliver Gimhae City's Smart Village rollout and expansion project — its first senior care project — successfully, ESTsoft has decided to make full use of the Tae Jin-Ah IP it recently secured. In other words, it will provide an environment optimized for older users through an AI human of a singer they already love.
Specifically, the AI human of Tae Jin-Ah, hugely popular with seniors, will deliver content for education and leisure — singing classes, cognitive activities and more — through smart TVs. In future the company plans to build a two-way communication environment with an AI human Tae Jin-Ah linked to ChatGPT, delivering services at a difficulty level suited to each user's age and health condition and able to respond in a range of emergencies. AI humans created from its own IP will also be installed in kiosks to help older people use various healthcare devices.
The project is worth KRW 800 million to 1 billion and will convert 32 senior centers across the Gimhae City area into smart senior centers over about seven months. If the project is selected as an outstanding service, additional funding will be available to roll it out more widely.
ESTsoft CEO Chung Sang-won said: "Senior care is an area that needs technology to turn it into a high-quality service," adding, "AI humans will add an emotional dimension and deliver a service on a completely different level from what exists today."
ESTsoft's AI human business is expanding rapidly at home and abroad. The company works with education, finance and healthcare companies to deliver AI human services in Korea in a variety of forms, and has recently moved quickly toward global expansion, including a collaboration with Microsoft.