Kakao Makers-Kakao Brain Launch Donation Project for 'World Animal Day'

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Kakao's impact commerce platform Kakao Makers and Kakao Brain are joining forces to protect endangered animals in celebration of 'World Animal Day.'

On the 4th, Kakao Makers and Kakao Brain announced that to mark World Animal Day, they will exclusively sell products collaboratively created by Kakao Brain's AI artist 'Karlo' and contemporary artist Sangwoo Ko on Kakao Makers until the 12th. All proceeds from sales will be donated to WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature).

The AI artist 'Karlo' participating in this project is an AI artist reborn as a single persona by advancing Kakao Brain's large-scale image generation AI models such as 'minDALL-E' and 'RQ-Transformer.' Having learned from a text-image dataset of approximately 180 million images, Karlo can generate images in various painting styles and techniques based on contextual understanding. In June of this year, Karlo held an exhibition featuring a digital artwork composed of 1,000 tiger images created in collaboration with artist Sangwoo Ko.

The products introduced through this project are sweatshirts and mugs. They feature 'Blue Tiger,' a mosaic of 500 tiger paintings harmoniously combining tiger illustrations generated by Karlo and the unique drawing style of Sangwoo Ko, a pioneer of blue-toned photographic art. All proceeds from sales will be donated to WWF, and to minimize waste, Kakao Makers has adopted an eco-friendly made-to-order production method (POD production), manufacturing products only in the quantities ordered.

Kim Ildu, CEO of Kakao Brain, expressed, "We are pleased to participate in endangered animal protection activities through artworks created by AI artist Karlo," adding, "We will continue to engage in meaningful projects that give back to society through our AI technology."

Jung Youngjoo, head of Kakao Makers, stated, "Following the planning and sale of products commemorating Cat Day last August, which also involved donations, we continue projects that respect and consider various members of society," and added, "We recognize users' interest in creating a better world and will continue to introduce unique Makers products that embody diverse values as an impact commerce platform."