Kakao Enterprise Unveils Live Streaming Service 'Kakao i Connect Live 2.0'

[Asia Economy Reporter Yuri Choi] Kakao Enterprise unveiled on the 26th its live streaming service “Kakao i Connect Live 2.0,” which enhances artificial intelligence (AI) technology to support simultaneous access and interaction by a large number of users.

Kakao Enterprise strengthened the AI-based interactive elements and scalability of the existing Kakao i Connect Live to enable a large number of users to participate in real-time online events in various ways.

The number of participants supported during live broadcasts has doubled from 1,000 to 2,000. The capacity for video conferencing increased from 100 to 500 participants, and chat capacity expanded from 100 to 1,000 users. Even with thousands of simultaneous connections, the service maintains the previously supported 0.5-second latency and guarantees a connection success rate of over 99%. When a large number of users connect simultaneously, the system can recognize active speakers engaged in meaningful conversations by detecting a small number of audio channels.

Convenience and efficiency in development have also been improved. Kakao i Connect Live 2.0 integrates the previously separated software development kits (SDKs) for calls, broadcasts, and meetings into a single SDK, allowing developers to create various services such as one-on-one (1:1) meetings, one-to-many (1:N) broadcasts, and many-to-many (N:N) conferences according to the purpose of the live streaming. To help small businesses and developers start live streaming platform development without burden, the existing single pricing plan has been expanded into four pricing plans based on company size.

Kakao Enterprise plans to sequentially release features within the year, including speaker-separated subtitles, various virtual background settings, live streaming screen mixing, and recording functions. The platform will be further advanced to enable companies and developers to provide live streaming services in games and metaverse-type services.

Choi Jin-ho, head of the Kakao Enterprise Connect Live team, said, “Kakao i Connect Live 2.0 is a service whose technology and stability have been verified through Kakao Work’s video conferencing, webinars, and voice chats, which are directly used by Kakao Enterprise. We plan to further enhance the service to meet customers’ demands for performance and fun elements comparable to large-scale simultaneous access role-playing games (RPGs) in real-time live streaming events.”