[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Naver and Kakao, accelerating the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, have been recognized for their AI capabilities on the global stage.
Naver Proves Itself as an 'AI Powerhouse'
Naver's research organization, Naver Clova, presented a total of 17 papers, including 14 regular papers and 3 workshop papers, at the prestigious international AI conference, the 'Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2022,' held from the 19th to the 24th (local time) in Louisiana, USA.
This is the first time a domestic company's research organization has presented double-digit papers at CVPR. Including the achievements of Naver Labs Europe (3 papers) and Naver Webtoon (2 papers), Naver and its affiliates presented a total of 22 papers at this CVPR. Naver's AI industry-academia collaboration results were also shared. The joint research center between Seoul National University and Naver's large-scale AI center unveiled three papers at this CVPR conference.
Notably, this is the first time that AI technology related to webtoons independently developed by Naver Webtoon was introduced at CVPR. They presented papers on ‘Automatic Background Separation,’ a technology that allows easy selection of the subject's outline, and ‘Webtooni,’ a technology that transforms scenes into webtoon-like images. The ‘Webtooni’ technology recently demonstrated new possibilities for content creation by being applied to live commerce. For example, during a Naver Shopping Live event selling products related to the popular Naver Webtoon series ‘Yumi's Cells,’ the host's face was transformed into a webtoon style for about 30 seconds.
In the first half of this year alone, Naver has been recognized for its research capabilities by publishing 60 research papers at global AI conferences such as the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), and the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP).
Ha Jung-woo, head of Naver Clova AI Lab, stated, “Presenting double-digit papers is a very rare case worldwide and signifies that Naver Clova’s computer vision and AI technology are at the world’s top level.”
Kakao Ranks No. 1 Globally in Facial Recognition Technology
Kakao’s AI technology subsidiary, Kakao Enterprise, ranked first worldwide in the 1:1 verification kiosk category at the 'Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT)' organized by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). FRVT is a competition that measures the performance of automatic facial recognition algorithms used in private, judicial, and national security fields such as immigration inspection through facial data comparison and detection of illegal passport duplication.
Kakao Enterprise explained, “Achieving first place in a category that requires advanced AI facial recognition technology is a remarkable and valuable result in the global AI industry.”
The technology used by Kakao Enterprise in this FRVT 1:1 verification is applied to the 'Walk-Through' facial recognition-based access system at Kakao Enterprise’s headquarters. Meanwhile, in this competition, Kakao Enterprise also ranked in the top 5 in four categories, including 2nd place in the immigration inspection category, 4th place in the visa immigration inspection category, and 4th place in the upper body category, proving its technological prowess.
Last year, Kakao Brain and Kakao Enterprise, leading Kakao’s AI technology, published 35 AI papers across 25 conferences, gaining recognition for their global-level AI capabilities.
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