'LG AI Talk Concert 2026' held Monday

Autonomous factory vision drives AI push

Over 100 industrial problems solved, 1,080 patents filed

Robot foundation model in development

Koo Kwang-mo: 'We stand at an inflection point'

Lee Hong-rak, director of LG AI Research. [LG]
Lee Hong-rak, director of LG AI Research. [LG]

LG AI Research has unveiled a suite of "expert AI" systems designed to tackle long-standing challenges across manufacturing, finance and science.

Going beyond general-purpose AI that simply answers questions, the institute is pushing AI that can anticipate changes on the factory floor, make its own judgments and act on them — with the goal of accelerating AI transformation across industries, including the development of fully autonomous factories.

LG AI Research held "LG AI Talk Concert 2026" on Monday at the Convergence Hall of LG Science Park in Magok, Gangseo-gu, Seoul, where it showcased expert AI systems developed for manufacturing, finance and science.

Co-Director Im Woo-hyung of LG AI Research said in a keynote address that building good AI models matters, but the institute's true mission is solving difficult problems that industry has failed to crack for years. "To solve problems on the factory floor, we need AI that can understand and judge countless variables — including the 1 percent of exceptions," he said.

On the manufacturing side, the institute introduced EXAONE Tabular, which understands and predicts process conditions and quality data, and EXAONE Omni-Inspect, which can inspect products even when process or product images change without requiring retraining. Both are AI foundation models capable of quickly and accurately predicting conditions from small amounts of on-site data while adapting to shifting process environments.

LG AI Research is also developing a vision inspection AI agent that autonomously handles data sampling, labeling and model training. The system is designed to give AI a full understanding of factory conditions, predict changes and then act on its own — a framework the institute says will accelerate the realization of autonomous factories.

In science, the institute unveiled EXAONE Discovery, which designs materials and predicts synthesis outcomes. It is also working to build an autonomous experimentation system that connects AI-driven prediction and design directly to real-world laboratory testing.

LG AI Research is developing immersion cooling fluid materials for next-generation AI data centers in collaboration with GS Caltex, and is working with D&D Pharmatech on next-generation oral peptide drug candidates. EXAONE 4.5 has been integrated into the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety's AI system for new drug review and is expected to help shorten approval timelines.

In finance, the institute highlighted EXAONE Business Intelligence, a system in which multiple AI agents collaborate to handle everything from data analysis to reasoning, forecasting and explanation. Since its official launch earlier this year, the institute has been expanding into global markets with the London Stock Exchange Group and into the domestic market with Koscom.

EXAONE Business Intelligence runs on EXAONE Forecast, an AI foundation model that processes information as it changes over time. LG AI Research plans to extend the product beyond South Korea, North America, Europe and the Middle East into additional markets, and to broaden its coverage to a wider range of asset classes including bonds and raw materials.

Since its founding in December 2020, LG AI Research has solved more than 100 industrial challenges, including predicting battery life and capacity, screening defective products, optimizing production and materials management plans, and identifying new drug candidates. It has published 368 papers at top-tier global AI conferences and filed 1,080 patents at home and abroad.

The institute is also developing a robot foundation model that would allow robots to make judgments and take actions in the real world. As part of that effort, it is building a proprietary algorithm to prevent accidents caused by robot operations before they occur.

"For the past six years, LG has been working to help AI understand industrial problems," Im said. "We are now preparing for the stage where that AI judges and acts on its own."

Koo Kwang-mo, chief executive of LG Group, has said the company stands at an inflection point where a new future is opening up. "Creating a better future is both our responsibility and our opportunity," he has said.


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