Upstage unveils new AI services

Kim Sung-hoon, founder and CEO of Upstage, speaks during a press conference at Ferrum Tower in central Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of Upstage

By Baek Byung-yeul

Upstage, a local artificial intelligence (AI) technology startup, has unveiled two AI services according to the company, Tuesday.

The services are Document AI Pack, an optical character recognition (OCR) technology-based document processor; and AskUp Seargest, an AI chat service that combines search and recommendation features.

Document AI Pack is an AI solution that can be utilized in various fields such as finance, insurance and health care, Upstage said. Using OCR technology, the service converts documents in image or PDF format to text and then extracts and summarizes the content of the required documents using natural language processing technology.

“This solution can help companies improve the efficiency and accuracy of document management and processing. Customers such as Samsung Life Insurance, Hanwha Life Insurance and POSCO Holdings have been using our service,” Kim Sung-hoon, founder and CEO of Upstage said during a press conference in Seoul.

Upstage also introduced AskUp Seargest, a solution that leverages search and recommendation technology to deliver hyper-personalized recommendations in chat.

The company said that by leveraging its expertise, it “has developed a solution that provides personalized and timely information delivered through a convenient interface.”

Upstage said that companies in a variety of industries, including retail, movies and travel, are interested in launching personalized AI chat services for their customers. It added that more than 100 companies are already on the waiting list.

Established in 2020, Upstage has gained attention due to its members hailing from Big Tech firms such as Google, Apple and Naver and via publishing numerous papers at AI conferences.

Its founder Kim launched the free email service Kebimail in Korea in 1997 and is an associate professor of computer science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He was also the head of NAVER's CLOVA AI service development team.

“Our company motto is making AI beneficial. In order to make AI beneficial, it needs to perform well and be accessible to any customer. To do this, we try to offer our services in packs that can be customized for different customers,” the CEO said.