AI service specialist ESTsoft (CEO Jungsangwon) has announced on the 31st that they have collaborated with foreign language education firm YBM (CEO HeoMoonho) to produce online pronunciation learning video lectures with an 'AI English Teacher' capable of speaking both English and Korean, and will be providing them to elementary schools nationwide starting in November.

The AI English Teachers developed by both companies are a male and female pair named 'James' and 'Michelle'. They were created using ESTsoft's AI persona technology, which generates non-existent characters afresh. Most importantly, ESTsoft’s independently developed bilingual speaking technology is deployed, allowing both James and Michelle to speak English and Korean at a native speaker level.

Both companies are hopeful that this attempt to apply AI humans to public school English lessons for the first time will greatly help elementary students to accurately learn basic English pronunciation. Elementary students today, known as the 'Alpha generation', have grown up experiencing technological advancements from a young age, and it is believed that AI human technology can draw out greater interest and immersion.

This online course, planned by English phonetics experts, will be provided through YBM's teacher resource support site 'Y Cloud'. Any certified teacher can utilize it for their lessons.

ESTsoft CEO Jungsangwon said, "I am very pleased that our AI technology can propose better teaching methods to teachers and students," and added, "We will delve deeper and expand our services so that AI humans can be used for socially valuable work."

Meanwhile, both companies have been actively continuing their collaboration to introduce AI humans into the education industry, including unveiling an AI TOEIC speaking teacher capable of simultaneous Korean-English speech last January.