5/4/2023

• AskUp, Korea's Leading Chat AI with 1 Million Users, Debuts in Japan

• Upstage AskUp's OCR, Search Engine, and Image Generator Trio Poised for Overseas Market Expansion

• "Upstage is committed to bringing convenient and innovative AI experiences to more people."

(Upstage = 2023/5/4) Upstage, a representative AI startup in Korea, launched AskUp on the global messenger platform 'LINE' and started to target overseas markets in earnest.

Upstage's AskUp, Korea's most popular Chat AI service released on KakaoTalk, will be officially released on LINE as well on May 5th, with the goal of expanding its user base beyond Korea to other countries.

AskUp is an AI chatbot service that provides various information and knowledge through natural language conversation by combining OpenAI's next-generation language model, GPT-4, with Upstage's optical character recognition (OCR) technology. Recently, with the addition of real-time search engine and AI image generator, which are considered limitations of ChatGPT, it has become a byword for homegrown generative AI, reaching nearly one million users in just two months after its launch.

Generative AI is gaining popularity in Japan, with similar GPT-integrated AI chat services attracting 1.4 million users. AskUp has a competitive advantage over its competitors as it goes beyond simple GPT integration to incorporate OCR technology for image processing, real-time search, AI image generation, and food recognition features, among other user-friendly functions.

LINE users can enjoy all the features of AskUp currently available on KakaoTalk by simply adding it as a friend without separate authentication. Unlike other homegrown AI chatbots, which provide five free uses per day and then charge users, AskUp maximizes user convenience by providing 100 GPT-3.5 messages and 10 GPT-4 messages for free, just like its KakaoTalk service.

AskUp has caught the attention of global users, particularly for its outstanding recognition rates in Japanese and English, which showcases Upstage's world-class OCR technology that has won four categories at the prestigious AI OCR competition, ICDAR 2023. Since its launch on KakaoTalk, AskUp has become popular in Korea as a "ChatGPT with eyes," capable of processing various documents, such as study materials, business registration certificates, and contracts.

In particular, with the launch of the AskUp Line, if you send a text document or handwritten image to AskUp, you can receive a response along with the translated content directly from the messenger, making it more useful in areas where digitization of documents is required, such as Japan and Southeast Asia, where Line users are concentrated. expected to be seen

Furthermore, AskUp applies Upstage's expertise in prompt-tuning and advanced fine-tuning techniques to detect users' intentions and emotions, allowing for optimized conversations in Japanese. Its integration with GPT-4 enables AskUp to utilize 27 languages across various fields, making it a highly versatile tool.

In addition, AskUp addresses the limitation of ChatGPT's 'hallucination' issue with its search engine that quickly finds real-time information and provides accurate answers. To enhance users' trust in the information provided, AskUp includes links to their sources.

AskUp's latest addition is the AI image generator, Upsketch, which produces high-quality images even with short prompts, thanks to Upstage's fine-tuning technique. It is widely considered to create the best images on mobile devices.

Moreover, Upstage has partnered with Doing Lab, an AI healthcare startup, to incorporate Food Lens into AskUp, providing food analysis functionality. By sending a photo of their food, users can receive nutritional information such as calories and ingredient content, as well as diet advice, thanks to the use of generative AI.

Upstage plans to speed up full-fledged global expansion by combining AskUp with the global messenger platform line, which has 95 million monthly active users (MAU) in Japan and 198 million worldwide MAU, as a bridgehead. Accordingly, starting with landing in Japan, the company is preparing to gradually expand its service to countries with high line occupancy, such as Thailand, Taiwan, and Indonesia.

Sung Kim, CEO of Upstage, stated, "AskUp has solidified its position as the best Chat AI in Korea with one million users and now aims to become a global platform through international expansion," and added, "With our world-class AI technology, Upstage is committed to bringing convenient and innovative AI experiences to more people."

In addition to the API series and Upstage AI Pack for global corporate clients, Upstage has launched AskUp Biz, the business version of AskUp. AskUp Biz can improve work efficiency and satisfaction by optimizing Chat AI for business environments. It is composed of three parts: AskUp Doc, which allows various documents to be read and information to be obtained through Chat AI, AskUp Web, which provides website information to website visitors, and AskUp Slack, which can be used as a business tool on Slack. Since its release, it has garnered significant attention and has received applications from hundreds of companies.

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