Naver and Kakao use AI technology to combat pirated webcomics

[Courtesy of Naver]

Naver Corp. and Kakao Corp., two major Korean platform companies, are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to block pirated webcomics, which is expected to help protect their webtoon business revenues.

According to sources on Wednesday, Naver Webtoon is integrating AI technology into its self-developed copyright protection technology called Toon Radar and taking measures to protect paid revenue. Toon Radar is a technology that inserts invisible user identification information into webtoon images to identify and block initial illegal leakers.

For example, vision AI is used to extract marks from illegally shared images, and machine learning technology is used to analyze and predict the usage patterns of illegal leakers, thereby detecting accounts suspected of illegal replication and sharing behaviors in advance. The development of Toon Radar is handled by the AI Protection team, which operates under Naver Webtoon’s AI organization with a team size of around 60 members.

According to research results announced by Professor Lee Gun-woong’s team at Korea University Business School, Toon Radar showed an effect of delaying the illegal distribution of webtoons by about 25 days compared to other platforms.

Naver Webtoon announced that from July 2017, when Toon Radar was first implemented, to December 2022, the takedown rate of primary illegal sites in Korea reached 97 percent. Takedown refers to the situation where the webtoon is changed to secondary illegal sites where it cannot be directly distributed or the situation where the pirated webtoon cannot be uploaded.

Among the 32 primary illegal sites in Korea, 31 sites ceased their activities. In the case of overseas sites, 42 out of 68 primary illegal sites are in a state of upload suspension.

While Naver focuses on proactive measures, Kakao is strengthening its reactive measures. Kakao Entertainment has established a dedicated team to respond to the illegal distribution of webtoons and web novels both domestically and internationally. According to a recent white paper published by Kakao Entertainment, it blocked about 14.2 million cases of illegal webtoons and web novels within six months from November last year to May this year on major global search sites and social media platforms.

Based on this, the company expects the number of illegal content removals to reach a total of over 28 million cases this year. Kakao Entertainment also included unauthorized secondary works such as illegal character goods or printed materials that utilize intellectual property (IP) as targets for crackdowns. For example, they have deleted web novel publications illegally sold on Amazon and prohibited the sale of IP-infringing T-shirts by printing companies.

As the webtoon market continues to grow, the damages caused by illegal content are increasing. According to a report published by the Korea Creative Content Agency late last year, the market size of illegal webtoon distribution reached 842.7 billion won ($660.3 million) as of 2021, up by about 54 percent compared to the previous year.