[DigitalToday reporter Jin-ho Lee] SK Telecom said on Saturday it held a TECH4GOOD hackathon with Hana Financial Group on the theme of AI services for an inclusive future.

The event was held on July 15-16 at SKT’s talent development centre in Icheon, Gyeonggi province, as part of an AI talent training programme. A total of 115 people took part, including 61 from the ninth cohort of SKT’s youth AI education programme, FLY AI Challenger, and 54 participants from Hana Financial Group’s youth finance talent training project.

Participants presented ideas on AI services to support socially vulnerable people and digitally marginalised groups, solutions for a sustainable society, and finance-telecom integrated ESG services. SKT developers took part as mentors, answered technical questions and supported participants in implementing their services.

The grand prize went to the T1 team, which developed a service that creates customised AI fairy tales based on a child’s experiences and uses them for discipline. The top excellence awards went to the Haemul Pajeon team, which built a service that reads fairy tales to a child in the voice of a parent who has difficulty with pronunciation, and the Sibijiganji team, which rebuilt stock price information into hearing and touch for the visually impaired.

SKT and Hana Financial Group have operated a joint hackathon to foster future AI talent since 2023. SKT has run FLY AI Challenger since 2022. The programme consists of AI theory and practice, ESG special lectures, developer talk concerts and team-building programmes.

Eom Jong-hwan (엄종환), head of SKT’s Sustainable Management Office, said, "This hackathon was a time to confirm the possibility that AI technology can create a better society." He said, "We will continue to work to expand the social value created by AI."