Kakao Unveils New AI Brand 'Kanana'... Aiming for Hyper-Personalized Services

Developer Event If Kakao Shares AI Strategy
User-Optimized 'AI Mate' Service
Personalized 'Nana' and Group Mate 'Kana' Differentiated

Kakao has unveiled a customized hyper-personalized artificial intelligence (AI) service. Kakao, which had been evaluated as lagging behind competitors like Naver in the AI field, including large language model (LLM) development, announced plans to target the market with this new service. Jeong Sin-ah, CEO of Kakao, specified the direction by stating, "We aim for a hyper-personalized AI service."

On the 22nd, Kakao held the 'if kakao 2024' event at the AI Campus in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, introducing its AI brand, Kanana, for the first time. Now in its sixth year, if kakao is a developer event that shares the group's technological vision and achievements, running through the 24th.

In his keynote speech, CEO Jeong said, "Kakao's core competitiveness lies in the connection of relationships," adding, "In the era of generative AI, we aim for a hyper-personalized AI service that considers context and emotions within various relationships and conversations."

The AI brand 'Kanana' clearly demonstrated Kakao's AI strategy direction. The name means "the AI that is most like me," and the same name was given to the new AI service. This service, aiming to be an 'AI mate,' remembers key information within conversational context to provide optimized responses to users. While existing AI services mainly function in one-on-one conversations, Kakao explained that Kanana understands context even in group conversations to offer appropriate answers.

Kanana is concretized into the personal AI 'Nana' and the group mate AI 'Kana.' Nana supports one-on-one conversations with users and also remembers schedules related to the user in group chats to provide reminders. It also has functions to understand and summarize various document formats or assist in discussions. Both text and voice inputs will be supported.

Jung Shin-ah, CEO of Kakao, is introducing the new artificial intelligence (AI) brand 'Kanana' at 'if kakao 2024' held on the 22nd at the AI Campus in Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do.

Kana operates based on group conversations. It analyzes and responds only to the content of group chats the user participates in. For example, in a study group, it can quiz and grade on papers read together or provide additional explanations. It can also suggest appointment schedules or locations using a whisper function within the chat room. This feature also summarizes past conversations and organizes exchanged information to deliver it. Instead of providing the same results to all users, it offers suggestions tailored to each user's context.

Lee Sang-ho, Performance Leader at KananaX, stated, "Kana will be launched as a separate application from KakaoTalk, and we plan to enhance its completeness through an internal test version release within this year."

Additionally, Kakao shared cases of actively utilizing AI, including KakaoTalk's AI-based abuse prevention system 'Fake Signal,' as well as AI-driven gift recommendations and personalized advertising. The group also announced future plans such as Kakao Mobility's autonomous taxis and Kakao Pay's personalized financial products.

The launch of Kakao's Kanana can be interpreted as placing more emphasis on services utilizing AI rather than AI itself. Kakao has been evaluated as having made little progress in AI-related business achievements compared to global big tech companies and domestic competitor Naver. Although it developed 'Ko-GPT 2.0,' an advanced LLM, it shifted its strategy to quickly release AI services instead of publicly unveiling the model.

Kakao also introduced major generative AI models currently under development. The language models are categorized by size into Kanana Flag, Kanana Essence, and Kanana Nano. A detailed lineup of AI models will be revealed on the 23rd.

There is interest in whether the newly unveiled service can serve as a savior for Kakao, which is facing crises such as the founder's detention. CEO Jeong emphasized, "We are focusing on the service aspect of AI so that Kakao's 50 million users can utilize advanced technology more easily and conveniently," adding, "We will continuously challenge and attempt to bring forward a future that everyone needs through AI technology."