LG Electronics holds first-half AX hackathon, selects 5 standout projects

LG Electronics held its first-half AX (AI Transformation) hackathon under the theme "AX for Everyone," the company announced Wednesday. The event is part of LG Electronics' push to make AI transformation a company-wide effort involving all employees, with the goal of accelerating innovation in how work gets done.

More than 2,100 employees took part in the hackathon. From over 700 submitted AI ideas, five standout projects were selected after two months of review and verification.

The ideas spanned a wide range of fields, including software development, product packaging design, and logistics and supply chain management.

One of the top projects is a 24-hour fully autonomous work execution system that uses AI agents to handle the entire software development cycle — from receiving and categorizing tasks to analyzing requirements, writing code, testing, documenting and reporting. Internal verification found that nearly 80 percent of tasks could be automated, potentially saving each employee more than 1,200 work hours per year. The system could eventually be expanded to cover general office work.

Another winning project is an automated product packaging design solution that sharply cuts the time spent on repetitive, highly skilled packaging work. It uses AI to replicate 3D modeling, the judgment logic of experienced developers, and container loading optimization. The solution is expected to reduce packaging design work that previously took an average of 120 hours down to roughly 1.5 hours.

A logistics and supply chain management solution analyzes up to 100,000 logistics and shipping data points in real time to proactively manage vessel schedule risks. Data queries and analysis that previously took more than three hours can now be completed in about one minute.

Two additional projects were also selected: an integrated work platform that cuts the time spent on internal administrative tasks — such as attendance and expense processing — by more than 80 percent, and an AI-based advertising content generation and recommendation system.

LG Electronics plans to conduct proof-of-concept testing on all five projects before gradually expanding their use across the organization. The company ultimately aims to register them as sub-agents within LGenie, its in-house AI platform for workplace use, to drive company-wide adoption.

This year marks the third edition of LG Electronics' AX hackathon, and participation has grown consistently as company-wide enthusiasm for AI transformation has built. Compared with roughly 500 participants at the inaugural event in the first half of 2024, this year's first-half hackathon drew more than 2,100 — an increase of nearly 50 percent from the same period last year. The total number of ideas submitted through this year's event now approaches 2,000.

LG Electronics is positioning the AX hackathon not as a simple idea competition but as a driver of genuine workplace innovation and AI culture. The initiative carries added significance as a bottom-up approach to productivity improvement, with ideas coming directly from employees who encounter challenges in their day-to-day work.

"We will continue to refine the top projects identified through the AX hackathon and expand their application across the company, so that all employees can actively use AI in their actual work — accelerating our transformation in how we work," said Cho Jeong-beom, executive vice president and head of LG Electronics' AX Center.