A cross-border team of lawyers at Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) have advised a consortium of five telecommunications companies on their agreement to establish an alliance powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
The Global Telco AI Alliance—formed last year of e&, Singtel, SoftBank Corp, SK Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom—will develop Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance customer service via digital assistants and other AI platforms.
The LLMs will support multiple languages, with plans to deploy AI applications customised to each party’s market needs across 50 countries, reaching approximately 1.3 billion customers.
The parties plan to invest equally in the joint venture.
It is subject to regulatory approvals, on which the firm is also advising.
The HSF team was led by Dubai corporate partners Chris Walters and Anna Szyndler, with technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) support provided by London partner Hayley Brady. Competition and foreign direct investment advice was provided by a Brussels and London team of partners Kyriakos Fountoukakos and Veronica Roberts.
“AI is dominating headlines globally at the moment and there are so many use cases currently being considered across industries and markets as participants seek to enhance efficiency, productivity and if relevant customer experience,” said Walters, who leads the firm’s corporate practice in the Middle East. “Working with such significant founding parties that have a market share of over 1 billion customers is a great credential for our firm and one which we can look to build on with further AI focused transactional mandates.”
Szyndler said the alliance is likely to “accelerate AI transformation of other industries and lead the growth of the global AI ecosystem”.
