South Korea's SK Telecom Launches AX 2.0 Plan, Equipping 80,000 Employees with AI Digital Workers
2026-06-21 11:28
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en.Wedoany.com Reported - SK Telecom recently launched the AX Innovation 2.0 plan, defining AI agents as "digital employees" with formal roles, employee-style IDs, departmental assignments, and managed lifecycles. Their management process covers the full cycle from "onboarding" to "termination." This marks a significant shift in the operator's AI deployment approach, moving beyond treating AI merely as a tool to integrating it as an organizational member within the company structure.

SK Telecom

The core goal of this plan is to achieve "one AI agent per employee," meaning every employee (including non-developers) will have at least one agent tailored to their role and tasks. This target demonstrates considerable ambition, transforming the project from an internal IT initiative into an organizational design adjustment.

At the administrative level, SK Telecom proposes providing each agent with an employee-style ID, assigning it to a specific department, and granting it a clear job function. The agent's permission levels will align with those of human employees in similar positions; for example, a marketing agent cannot access the permission scope of a network operations agent. This role-based permission mapping distinguishes it from typical generative AI deployments.

The key platform supporting this plan is A. Biz, SK Telecom's B2B AI agent platform, which handles tasks such as information retrieval, schedule management, and meeting minutes. Users interact through natural language, and the system can execute relevant operations. Agent Builder allows employees without technical backgrounds to build agents that securely connect to internal data, while Agent Store serves as an internal marketplace for employees to share self-built agents, fostering a bottom-up mechanism for spreading best practices.

Additionally, SK Telecom has piloted A. Biz Cowork, an internal test version that allows employees to train agents based on their personal work methods, processes, and preferences, enabling agents to mimic individual workflows and take over repetitive tasks. Other platforms, such as Polaris, focus on marketing and data extraction, while Playground supports network data analysis and coding assistance.

To ensure governance, SK Telecom has established a human-machine collaboration framework, setting rules for agent data and security access permissions. A zero-trust architecture continuously verifies both AI agents and human users. The AXMS (AX Management System) has been upgraded to version 1.5 for tracking AX projects and integrating AI-related initiatives. An AI sandbox provides a controlled environment where human employees collaborate with multiple AI agents in multi-agent workflows. Early trials have shown reductions in planning and coordination time, as well as improvements in internal communication and decision-making.

In terms of training, SK Telecom is committed to building a culture of "everyone is an AI worker and AI builder" through programs such as the AX Challenge, Frontier training, Design Camp, and Bootcamp. The company emphasizes that agents are designed to augment, not replace, human capabilities.

SK Telecom is already using thousands of AI agents internally and plans to roll out A. Biz to 25 SK Group companies, covering approximately 80,000 employees. In the future, the company also plans to offer the platform to external enterprises in the telecommunications, IT services, manufacturing, and petrochemical sectors. However, the plan still faces unresolved issues such as performance measurement, accountability, regulatory compliance, and governance at scale.

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