SM Entertainment is partnering up with KAIST to research about metaverse!

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SM Entertainment Partners With KAIST for Joint Research on Metaverse

On June 23, KST, SM Entertainment announced that they are partnering up with KAIST, also known as the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, to make further advanced research on metaverse, a virtual three-dimensional world, as it is becoming increasingly common in the K-Pop world.

SM Entertainment's founder Lee Soo Man and CEO, Lee Seong Soo, met up with KAIST's president, Lee Gwang Hyung, at the KAIST headquarters located in Daejeon to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the research on metaverse.

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With the Memorandum of Understanding in place, KAIST and SM Entertainment are planning to launch several collaboration projects in different fields, such as robots, artificial intelligence, more content in entertainment, as well as to conduct further research on cultural technology and productions on digital avatars.

The president of KAIST, Lee Gwang Hyung, hopes that with SM Entertainment's cultural imagination, which has captured the hearts of many people, and the excellent technology at KAIST would bring about a product of great creativity that can greatly contribute to the entertainment market's future. In addition, they also hope to develop engineering technology.

Later on, Lee Soo Man also gave a special lecture to KAIST students regarding the topic of the entertainment world's future where SM Entertainment and KAIST co-exist.

During the lecture, Lee Soo Man states that cultural technology is the core competency that played an important role in the expansion of K-Pop into a global phenomenon and that based on his experiences, knowledge, and know-how, he has established a technology for creating content, an independent concept called "culture technology" (CT).

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"Culture and science must naturally converge for the coexistence of human life and the future," said Lee Soo Man as he considers it important to be able to present new experiences in content by always trying to converge culture and technology. He also mentions SM Entertainment's online concert "Beyond Live, as well as their holographic contents as an example of culture technology.

Lee Soo Man also explains that the future of entertainment will become a world of robots and celebrities, and these robots begin as avatars. He then mentions their rookie girl group, aespa, who is known for their virtual avatar concepts and having their own avatars called "ae," as they have already shown glimpses of the future world to the public.

Besides SM Entertainment, the K-Pop industry has also begun actively utilizing the concept of metaverse, such as HYBE Corporation, JYP Entertainment, and YG Entertainment making investments in the virtual world platforms, such as Snow, a South Korean mobile application that features augmented reality (AR) and filters.

Snow is also a subsidiary of Naver that operates on "Zepetto," an augmented reality avatar application, to which YG Entertainment's girl group BLACKPINK held a fan signing event in this virtual world.

What are your thoughts on SM Entertainment and KAIST's partnership?

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Written by Robyn Joan