Socar’s parking platform Everyone's Parking Lot has launched what it called South Korea’s first AI-based voice parking pass purchase service, it said on Wednesday. When users speak their destination and planned usage time in the app, the AI understands the request, recommends candidate parking lots, provides payment guidance and links to navigation.

A new “AI microphone” button has been added to the search bar on the app’s home screen. After pressing the button, users can state conditions such as “Find a parking lot near Gangnam Station” or “That parking lot I paid for just before,” and park where they want while talking with the AI. The purchase is completed when users press the “Pay” button at the final payment step.

The company said about 62 percent of parking pass buyers were counted as having entered within 1 hour after payment. That is interpreted to mean there was a pattern of buying parking passes while heading to the destination. Early in development, it considered first launching text chat and then adding voice, but it changed direction in July to a voice-only interface, judging that the earlier plan did not fit the aim of improving usability for drivers.

Its own commercial district data was used for destination recognition. Socar combined nationwide data on 358 commercial districts built through machine learning with usage records to calibrate about 30,000 destination keywords into actual demand points. It also set up safeguards for personal information and payment. License plate numbers and card information are replaced with arbitrary labels such as “Vehicle 1” and “Card 1” before being sent to the AI, and are discarded immediately when the session ends. Payments are completed only when users press a button, and the final amount is re-verified once more by the payment system, the company explained.

Hyun-cheol Noh (노현철), head of Everyone's Parking Lot, said the service was one of the outcomes of the company’s “AI Pilot Program,” which solves business problems with AI through an internal contest, and that it was more meaningful because the employees who proposed the idea led everything from planning to development. He said the company will continue upgrading the service based on actual usage indicators after the beta launch to improve user convenience.