SKT is using the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Korean liberation (광복 80주년) day to promote their domestic AI sovereignty by producing an AI generated video of several famous Korean liberation struggle heroes singing the national anthem.
The video is five minute promotion of SK's artificial intelligence capabilities and an thinly veiled argument connecting national political independence with AI sovereignty and why we should invest in Korean AI instead of using ChatGPT. Seems a little on the nose for Liberation Day but the argument checks out.
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| Still clip of AI-generated version of Korean independence movement |
The video is five minute promotion of SK's artificial intelligence capabilities and an thinly veiled argument connecting national political independence with AI sovereignty and why we should invest in Korean AI instead of using ChatGPT. Seems a little on the nose for Liberation Day but the argument checks out.
What makes this more than just an advertisement is that they then demonstrate some of their technical capabilities by bringing to life some famous Korean independence struggle heroes. These are apparently regenerated from photographs and spoken recordings, so you can hear restorations of their actual voices.
The lineup of famous Korean independence activists includes:
- Yu Gwan-sun (유관순)
- Yun Bong-gil (윤봉길)
- Kim Gu (김구)
- Yi Si-yeong (이시영)
- Kim Gyu-sik (김규식)
- Jo So-ang (조소앙)
- Sin Ik-hui (신익희)
Here are some still frames from the video, but these likenesses are moving, breathing and singing Aegukga (애국가) in the actual video.
And here's the video. Fast forward to 6:40 if the link doesn't take you there directly to see these. Note that after them, they start generation some Korean corporate AI bigshots so ignore those. You're here for the history.
I personally feel like this wasn't ready for prime time. It's neat, but I have to admit I found myself a bit disappointed at the overall quality. It's not going to win any arguments against the whole AI slop concept. As a promotional piece, it doesn't really seem to match the level of some of the stuff I've seen coming out of Google Veo3. But maybe that fact alone is an argument for investing more in local domestic versions.
A better version in my opinion is this one they did with the Korean Hall of Independence (독립기념관). Here it suggests that they additionally made use of the voices of the descendants of some of these figures to help pad out the training data.
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| Sin Ik-hui (신익희) speaking in an SKT AI regeneration |
I like this one more because I enjoy seeing old photos brought to life through slight animation, like the newspaper photos in Harry Potter or those Live Photos on Apple phones. It's subtle but I think does a better job of making the moment seem real.
Anyway a few neat things to browse while celebrating 80 years of freedom.
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