South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc. has opened an artificial intelligence research lab in Toronto amid the heated global fight over a limited pool of AI talents.

The Korean tech giant said Wednesday this will be its first overseas facility dedicated to AI research. It also plans to team up with the University of Toronto to jointly conduct AI research starting next month.

The new research center will focus on deep learning to develop proprietary AI technologies and join LG Elec`s AI research network in Seoul, Silicon Valley, Bangalore and Moscow, the company added.

LG Electronics also plans to collaborate with AI startups in Canada and provide funding to promising new companies.

Canada has emerged as a hub in AI development, with universities in Toronto, Waterloo, Montreal and Edmonton investing heavily in artificial neural networks.

Attracted by the abundance of AI talent, many companies have been turning to Canada as a base to further their AI research.

In May, Samsung Electronics set up one of its five AI research centers in Toronto. It also operates labs in Seoul, Moscow, Silicon Valley, and Cambridge, U.K.

DeepMind, Google’s AI research arm, opened its first lab outside of the U.K. last year in Edmonton, in partnership with the University of Alberta. In January, Microsoft announced it would double the size of its AI research center in Montreal and hired a renowned machine learning expert as the lab’s new director.

LG Electronics has recently been stepping up its efforts in the race for AI development. In June 2017, it launched an AI research center within its software center and has been working on biometrics, voice and image recognition technologies as well as deep learning algorithms. Earlier this year, it set up an advanced AI center under its lab in Silicon Valley to bolster its deep learning and future mobility capabilities.

By Chun Gyung-woon and Kim Hyo-jin

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]