November 29, 2024

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Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon speaks at Innovate Korea 2024 held at the KAIST Lyu Keun-chul Sports Complex in Daejeon on Wednesday. (Lee Sang-sub/The Korea Herald)

DAEJEON -- Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon highlighted how sincerely the IT giant is approaching the burgeoning artificial intelligence technologies in her speech at Innovate Korea 2024, held in Daejeon on Wednesday.

“AI technology is a game changer which is developing rapidly, although it also stirs up several concerns,” she said. “Naver has been sincere about AI and we’ve been putting much effort into making a perfect Korean-language AI model.”

The Naver chief pointed out that AI technology requires abundant human and material resources, as well as preceding research. In Korea, however, these sources are minimal.

To overcome these obstacles, Naver has spent more than 20 percent of its sales on research and development and more than half on R&D manpower. It has already actively conducted research with Big Tech firms and global scholars including Intel and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

As a result, it unveiled HyperClova X, an upgraded version of its hyperscale artificial intelligence model in August last year. As the world’s third large-scale AI, it boasts greater Korean language skills than its US rivals, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard.

Choi further mentioned the IT giant’s ultimate goals of creating AI-integrated services that 35 million users can use every day, as well as further contributing to diversity, safety and sovereign AI from a global perspective.

“We’d like to contribute to the diverse expansion of the global AI industry. … We have our Naver AI Safety Framework that can guide AI safety. We believe we can also present a new alternative to other countries that want to grow their AI ​​industry,” she said.

By Jie Ye-eun (yeeun@heraldcorp.com)