Generative AI startup FortyTwoMaru said on Tuesday it has completed development of an "AI-based personalised Korean learning service to improve literacy" backed by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT). It said it will fully push ahead with an AX transition in the edtech industry.

The project was led by CommunicationBooks, with FortyTwoMaru, Siwon School and Intube taking part as a consortium. It aimed to improve literacy for Korean language learners by building an integrated online Korean learning service spanning a three-step literacy diagnostic assessment, provision of reading content, and learning analysis and recommendations.

FortyTwoMaru said it led the development of an AI engine for a "flexible reading book" in the project. It said it applied a domain-specific lightweight large language model, "LLM42", and retrieval-augmented generation technology, "RAG42", to convert open content such as news and articles in real time into reading materials tailored to learners' levels. It said it also implemented technology to quantitatively assess comprehension using AI question generation (QG) and machine reading comprehension (MRC).

FortyTwoMaru said it plans to expand an AX business model linked to learning management and analytics systems and global learning platforms, based on the flexible reading book engine and verification results secured through the project.

Kim Dong-hwan (김동환), FortyTwoMaru's CEO, said Korean ranked as the sixth most-studied language worldwide on the global language learning app Duolingo, surpassing Italian, and annual TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean) test-takers have exceeded 550,000. "We will work to improve foreigners' Korean literacy with FortyTwoMaru's generative AI technology and break down language barriers, so that we can contribute to broadly promoting the value of the K-wave to the world," he said.