News 1

ETRI Develops AI Technology to Create
Fashion Design and Modeling

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, or ETRI for short, succeeded in developing an artificial intelligence technology that can help produce personalized fashion products by analyzing the user’s preference and latest trends. The institute also developed a service designed to help the user immediately try on the newly designed clothing in virtual space and enable the user to utilize the service by dressing the AI-created clothing on virtual avatars on the Metaverse¹⁾platform. The service was developed by utilizing a video generation technology based on Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN)²⁾

To use the technology, the user selects options such as clothing type, season, color and pattern, after which the AI produces a personalized design. Not only can the designed clothing be tried on a model; it can also be reviewed using a video, so that the user can predict the outcome before producing the actual product.

The AI program can also help create a unique brand as AI can add specific patterns or styles to the user’s photograph, creating a new logo or icon. The research team at ETRI proved the practicality of the new technology, which can help the user produce products with high degree of completion by utilizing the program designed to make various kinds of merchandise, such as picture frame, mug and cushion.

The research team at ETRI plans to advance technologies to improve the resolution of generated images and announce the establishment and development of easy-to-use tools as well as platforms supporting automation for one-person media creators to participate in product production.

1)A compound word combining “meta” and “universe.” The word refers to a virtual world for daily life or games where reality and non-reality coexist.

2)Generative Adversarial Networks: a machine learning technology that generates false data similar to reality.

News 2

ETRI has secured 2,000 patents
in the field of artificial intelligence

ETRI has applied for 1,983 patents in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) at home and abroad over the last five years since 2016. It has raised its status internationally, having been listed in the “Patent and 4th industrial revolution” report issued by the European Patent Office (EPO) as the top patent applicant among research institutes and universities in the world in terms of International Patent Families (IPFs)¹⁾ related to the 4th industrial revolution since 2000.

ETRI has applied for numerous patents for AI technologies over the last five years, including ▲ visual intelligence (515 cases) ▲ data analytics and prediction (418 cases) ▲ voice recognition and natural language processing (314 cases) ▲ core AI algorithms (173 cases), ▲ AI semiconductor (165 cases) ▲ complex intelligence (117 cases) and ▲ life medicine/healthcare (111 cases). Other fields with numerous patent applications include ▲ robotics (62 cases) ▲ video/audio coding (50 cases) and ▲ human augmentation AI (47 cases).

As a characteristic of ETRI’s AI-related patent applications, the applications are diversely distributed in the AI field, which has recently been highlighted. In particular, ETRI has demonstrated substantial results by increasing the number of patent applications in the AI field from 13.2% in 2016 to 22.2% last year, among all patent applications, since its transformation into a “comprehensive national intelligence research institute” in 2019.

1) A high-quality invention that has applied for patent in more than two patent offices worldwide.

News 3

ETRI is leading global ICT standardization

ETRI announced that it has acquired 943 international standard patents so far by securing 72 more patents in 2020. ETRI also established 78 international standards and published 44 contributions reflecting international standard patents.

In keeping pace with the government policy direction, ETRI has reflected the demand of the domestic market in the fields of DNA (data, network, artificial intelligence) and major ICT convergence services and has carried out standardization tasks at the national level. ETRI also established the first international standard to provide the entire process of machine learning development in a cloud environment and obtained approval for the task of developing the data quality standard, which will be applied to big data analysis and machine learning that are needed to produce high-quality data.

ETRI is expected to secure considerable royalties because many commercial standard patents with high market demand, such as 33 patents in the field of next-generation video compression standard (VVC) and 17 patents in the field of 5G mobile communication (NR), are included in the international standard patents that were mainly secured in 2020.

“Last year, we started to establish a new plan for ICT standardization activities and respond to COVID-19. This year, we will make efforts for multifaceted global standardization that can lead the era of new normal, based on the experience last year and the ICT standardization response system,” said Kang Shingak, Assistant Vice President of ETRI’s Standards & Open Source Research Division.