[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] On the 3rd, Naver shared the transformation from the existing integrated search to ‘Air Search,’ which is advanced into user-customized search through the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology, and the achievements of its technical research at the ‘Naver Search Colloquium 2022’ held on the same day.
Air Search is a new search brand introduced last October to meet the increasingly segmented and diversified user demands. It builds a search environment where users can experience AI in daily life through various AI recommendation technologies of Naver such as Airs, AItems, Airspace, as well as search technologies including knowledge base, knowledge snippet, and multimodal AI. Through the ‘Smart Block,’ which integrates these technologies, it provides search results that subdivide user search intent.
Within the year, Smart Blocks to be subdivided into 4 types and expanded up to 30% of search results
On this day, Jaeho Choi, the lead responsible at Search CIC, shared the achievements after the launch of Smart Block in his keynote. Smart Block is a search result where even if users input vague search terms, topics optimized for search intent and user preferences are automatically generated and presented in block form.
Lead Choi explained, “The average daily exposure of Smart Block is about 29 million, and more than 4 million clicks on content suggested by Smart Block occur daily. Especially, compared to the initial launch, content consumption within search results has increased by about 335%, indicating that users consume more content than before.”
He added, “Since AI creates blocks of various topics according to search terms, as the number of blocks increases, the participation channels for creators will also increase. Blocks exposing influencer creator content have increased by about 616%, positively impacting the creator ecosystem.”
Naver plans to expand Smart Blocks to about 30% of all search results within the year and further subdivide them into four types: △Answer type △Exploratory type △Responsive type △Discovery type, providing more than 3 million Smart Blocks.
Active research on new AI technologies led by global researchers
At this event, a new AI model currently under research, ‘Ocean,’ was also introduced. Ocean is a technology designed to reduce unnecessary steps in the user’s search process and propose the optimal path.
Yongbeom Kim, Chief Scientist at Naver Search US, explained, “Ocean directly models user behavior patterns and is a core technology necessary to act as a specialized advisor depending on the situation. When applied to services, this technology will serve as a smart advisor that organically connects to various Naver services such as maps, shopping, and reservations according to the user’s search intent.”
For example, when a user searches for ‘Nordic interior, 30-pyeong living room interior,’ Ocean recommends content that fits the Nordic interior style and furniture arrangement and recommendations after receiving additional information such as ‘taking photos of one’s own space’ through the optimal path learned by Ocean.
In addition, 15 individual presentation sessions under three themes?△Search AI △Commerce AI △Future AI?continued with explanations of various AI technologies applied to Air Search. Especially, the development process of the latest AI models such as ‘Smart Lens,’ which applies the recently commercialized multimodal AI ‘Omni Search,’ and ‘Knowledge Interactive,’ which incorporates large-scale AI, 3D, and AR technologies, was shared along with Naver’s unique technical know-how to stably serve tens of millions of users daily.
Jaeho Choi, lead responsible at Naver Search CIC, said, “It is meaningful to share various technologies researched by Naver with many experts through the colloquium, which has become a representative academic event in the AI and search fields for the sixth year. As part of the advancement of Air Search this year, Naver will gradually expand its AI technology across the entire search service and enhance AI search experiences in users’ daily lives.”
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