"After graduating from Korea University with a degree in mechanical engineering and researching robotic AI in the artificial intelligence department, I embarked on the path of entrepreneurship with a desire to innovate the world through technology. A time will come when beings other than humans will naturally face each other in everyday life. We aim to contribute to transforming such encounters into experiences that are richer in human emotion, rather than simple interactions."
Park Seong-hyun, the CEO of ATLO, which provides digital companion services, explained his background for starting the company. A digital companion refers to a being that operates as a partner based on digital technology, including artificial intelligence and robotics.
Park noted, "Our goal is to use technology to help people feel less lonely by becoming a warm companion. We want to be a company that stays by their side even in difficult times, helping them rediscover the meaning of life."
ATLO organizes complex days into conversations through its website and allows users to focus on their emotions. Users can communicate with their digital companion via text and voice, selecting names, dispositions, and voices to create their own personalized friends.
ATLO provides conversations based on voices trained from singers. This maximizes emotional expressiveness and immersiveness. Additionally, it analyzes emotions and situations in real-time through cameras to provide natural and personalized conversations. It also developed hardware devices that can move and converse.
ATLO's growth strategy has two main aspects. In the B2C (business-to-consumer) institutional sector, the goal is to secure loyal customers by offering various personalized content such as automatic emotional diary writing and emotion tracking.
In the B2B (business-to-business) transaction sector, the aim is to verify the feasibility of an emotional support system using digital companions through cooperation with counseling centers and mental health organizations and to establish formal contracts.
Park noted, "After securing a stable foundation in the Korean market, we plan to expand into overseas markets, aligning with a global culture that values emotional consolidation. We will introduce emotion analysis artificial intelligence (AI) tailored to different languages and cultures or secure various voice intellectual properties to provide localized digital companion services."
Meanwhile, ATLO is a resident company in the Dongguk University Campus Town and receives support from both Seoul City and the Dongguk University Campus Town Project Group. The project group selects promising startups as resident companies, providing entrepreneurial support space and various startup incubation programs, including practical training and ongoing advice from experts.