Lotte Group's AI boost launches new ethics code

Lotte Group employees take an oath to uphold the company’s newly established AI ethics code during a ceremony at Lotte World Tower in Seoul, Wednesday. Courtesy of Lotte Group

Lotte Group announced Wednesday its new code of ethics for employees regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI), as the technology becomes increasingly integrated across the conglomerate’s various divisions and expanding business operations.

The key conglomerate in the country had a pronouncement ceremony for the new future-oriented business principles at the group’s office in Lotte World Tower in southeastern Seoul. Eighty employees of the group’s holding company, Lotte Corp., and subsidiaries who deal with AI technologies joined the event. Lotte Corp. Co-President and Head of Business Innovation Rho Jun-hyung was among the participants.

The code, consisting of 10 clauses under six key values, is a set of guidance to keep the workers from causing any social disputes throughout all stages of business tasks, from development to application in practice. The key values are human dignity, security, transparency, fairness, responsibility and solidarity.

The group said the key values share common ground with UNESCO as well as the AI ethical guideline from the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT.

Lotte's new ethical code came as the group is seeing exploration of AI technologies throughout its entire business operations by 93 subsidiaries, 11 of which are listed companies. The group has categorized purchase-manufacturing, product sales, marketing and customer management as its key sectors to boost using AI.

AI has led to some notable accomplishments within Lotte, according to the group.

Lotte Chemical developed a new system that automatically matches customized colors for synthetic resin products based on customers’ specific demands, improving the company's daily productivity by 50 percent.

Lotte Fine Chemical, by developing a new system that analyzes latest market demands and predicts contract price for raw materials, has added extra efficiency to its cost management and purchase of materials.

Lotte has begun expanding its range of business to benefit more from AI. Aimember, an AI-based data management support platform developed by Lotte Innovate in 2023, has prompted Lotte employees to use it on average of 150,000 times per month. On the back of the popularity, the company last month signed supply contracts for the platform with six IT solution companies.

Park Jong-nam, head of Lotte Corp.'s AI Innovation Task Force Division, said that Lotte's increasing utilization of AI in business has fueled the risks of spread of misinformation, breach of classified data and violation of human rights.

“With the new code of ethics, we can verify potential risks of various results and outcomes of our AI-based operations. That way, we can establish a safe communicative environment and accelerate our AI competitiveness,” he said.