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KR — ZDNet Korea

Selectstar Unveils AI Model Auto-Selection Tech, Cutting Costs by 28%

AI1 min read

Korean AI company SelectStar has released Dabi, a model that picks the best AI model for each question. In its own tests, this cut costs by about 28% while also raising accuracy.

What happened

SelectStar announced Dabi, a special AI model that judges other AI models. Dabi reads a question, decides how hard it is, and then picks a suitable AI model to answer it. It can also grade AI answers and predict whether an AI agent will finish a task successfully. SelectStar open-sourced a model routing plugin for developers as well.

Key numbers

  • Cost of running models: about 28% lower than using only the strongest model
  • Correct answers: 619 of 870 (71.1%) with Dabi, versus 612 of 870 (70.3%) with the top model only
  • On the JebiBench test (231 questions), Dabi scored 89.2% and Zeb scored 86.6%
  • On hard questions, Dabi scored 77.5% and Zeb scored 73.0%
  • In Korean answer grading, Dabi scored 72.5% and Zeb scored 66.8%

Why routing matters

AI services usually send every question to one fixed model. A simple question sent to a powerful model wastes money. A hard question sent to a weak model may get a wrong answer. Model routing tries to fix both problems. Easy questions go to small, cheap models, and hard questions go to strong, expensive ones.

Why it matters

Companies that run AI services pay for every model call, so lower costs can make AI cheaper to use. SelectStar says the savings are only useful if answer quality stays high. The results come from the company's own tests, which covered only hard Korean question answering. The cost figure also does not include the cost of Dabi's own calls, so real savings in business use still need to be checked.

What to watch

  • SelectStar plans to use Dabi in its AI trust platform, Datumo Eval, starting in November
  • Independent tests will show whether the cost savings hold up outside the company's own experiments
  • Developers can try the open-source routing plugin, which uses the Apache License 2.0 and allows commercial use

Glossary

SelectStar
A Korean company that makes AI tools and evaluation technology, and that released the Dabi model.
Dabi
An AI model that judges questions and picks which AI model should answer them.
Zeb
An AI judgment model developed by TypeSafe AI, used as the comparison model in the tests.
Model routing
Sending each question to a different AI model based on how hard the question is.
Apache License 2.0
A free open-source software license that lets anyone read, change, and use the code, including for business.

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