[Gettyimages Bank]
The number of single-person households has been rapidly increasing in South Korea with a population of about 52 million. Data released by the national statistics office in 2021 showed that 1.6 million households were single-person households aged 65 or older. The proportion of old people who live alone is gradually increasing from 16 percent in 2000 to 19.6 percent in 2020. 43 percent of people who died of a lonely death in 2019 were elderly people.
South Korea with a rapidly aging population has various AI-based call services that are used by private sectors and local administrative bodies to call and check the condition of elderly single households. Naver has Clova Care Call service which uses AI to make routine phone calls to single-person households to check their well-being.
Naver said that the company adopted a purposeful conversation feature to its care call service so that the super-scale can recognize disaster-related notifications sent out by local governments and ask people how they are coping with the situation. For example, Naver's AI could start an oral conversation by saying through a phone call: "The weather has been really cold lately. How's your condition?"
"It is important for people to check up on the damage which the vulnerable people received through natural disasters and let them know of safety counteractions," Naver said in a statement on January 9. The tech giant said that the company will increase the number of topics covered by AI on the phone by cooperating with local governments.
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