SK Telecom, the Korean conglomerate, officially announced a partnership with Morph Interactive, a Seoul-based business specializing in computer system design and three-dimensional graphics animation.
Last year, SK Telecom, a South Korean mobile operator, launched Ifland, a metaverse platform aiming at providing a variety of virtual places with customisable and expressive user avatars.
The two firms have agreed to a strategic partnership in which SK Telecom will purchase an undisclosed share in Morph Interactive and the two companies will work to develop additional features for the Ifland platform.
Users’ avatars will be able to interact with items, and mini-games will be introduced that may be played alone or with other users in the same virtual space.
The investment, according to Yang Maeng-seok, CEO of SK Telecom’s metaverse business, will be used to “provide more enjoyment features to Ifland users.”
Other features that will be added to the platform by the end of the year include the formation of Ifland’s own digital economy in the form of crypto-currency and the introduction of a virtual store where users can buy clothing for their avatars.
“We will do everything we can to create Ifland a medium that is near to many users’ daily lives and can be actively employed in enterprises,” said Morph Interactive CEO Kim Jung-youl.
The contract between SK Telecom and Morph was enacted in a virtual ceremony held on the Ifland platform, with the executives of both firms signing the deal with their virtual avatars, to illustrate the potential of Ifland as a communication medium for enterprises.
In related news, SK Telecom announced the development of an AI post-production platform that employs artificial intelligence to detect and remove subtitles, copyrighted music, and graphics included in video content. This would make it easier to export Korean content to other countries by allowing content to meet the distribution standards of global platforms like Netflix and Amazon.
For MetaNews.