Naver achieves big on AI research, with 12 papers accepted at intl conference

South Korea’s top online platform Naver has been making big strides on artificial intelligence (AI) front after devoting 25 percent of its revenue into R&D in collaboration with leading universities in Korea and overseas.

According to industry sources on Tuesday, International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), one of the world's most prestigious AI conferences in the field of machine learning based on Google Scholar rankings, recently accepted 12 papers from Naver Clova researchers for its 2022 conference.

The double-digit adoption by the leading machine learning conference is the first among Korean companies and a record-breaking result in the history of Korean AI companies, said a conference official.

In addition, seven papers from Naver AI Lab and Clova researchers were accepted by 'ICASSP 2022', the world’s largest conference in the field of AI for voice recognition.

The ICLR accomplishment is significant as the Naver papers are based on joint research with Seoul National University and KAIST that started partnership for hyperscale AI last year.

The Korean internet giant is also speeding up efforts to build an AI R&D network overseas. It created Naver Labs Europe by acquiring Xerox Research Centre Europe in France in June 2017. With its lab establishment, the company has continued to partner with various research institutes in Japan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and the United States.

Naver is working to set up a joint AI research center with University of Tübingen in Germany in the first half of this year. It also plans to expand its AI R&D organization in North America, while increasing recruitment of AI experts overseas. The company recently recruited Professor Kim Yoon-hyung of MIT and Professor Karl Stratos of Rutgers University as Naver Scholars eligible to participate in the development of Naver’s AI technologies and solutions while serving at their institutions.

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