Naver in prime position for hyper-scale AI B2B competition: CEO

Naver Corp.’s Chief Executive Officer Choi Soo-yeon. [Photo by Lee Seung-hwan]

As competition intensifies in the business-to-business (B2B) market for hyper-scale artificial intelligence (AI), South Korean platform giant Naver Corp. is in the best position to address business viability and security, key factors for competitiveness, the company’s Chief Executive Officer Choi Soo-yeon said. Choi added that HyperCLOVA X, Naver’s in-house large language model (LLM), could provide its domestic partners with generative AI technology optimized for diversity and AI sovereignty.

Naver has a diverse business portfolio ranging from internet searches to shopping, payment, and booking, and HyperCLOVA X is the world’s third self-developed hyper-scale AI, so the company’s various services and LLM will create great synergies, according to analysts. Choi spoke exclusively with Maeil Business Newspaper on Tuesday after moderating a dialogue with Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak at the 24th World Knowledge Forum organized by Maekyung Media Group. During the interview, Choi emphasized that B2B has emerged as the key to the competition among generative AI technology companies and that Neurocloud for HyperCLOVA X, which Naver plans to launch next month, will be a game changer.

Neurocloud for HyperCLOVA X, an enterprise AI solution for the Naver Cloud Platform, is attracting a lot of interest from B2B customers as it allows companies to build a dedicated AI platform by safely training their own data without worrying about security breaches or data leaks and installing a hybrid cloud directly inside the client’s data center.

“Neurocloud is a solution that only Naver can offer to B2B customers in this market, as it allows companies to create super-sized AI in the form they want without exporting data,” Choi said. “We expect to further expand our technology ecosystem based on CLOVA Studio, a collaboration model with small and medium-sized enterprises and highlight our competitiveness through Neurocloud in data security issues that our global peers have not solved.”

Choi explained that the company has seen tangible results since unveiling HyperCLOVA X last month. KB Financial Group is considering using HyperCLOVA X to build financial-specific generative AI models and services, according to sources. Hana Bank Co., Shinhan Bank Co., Mirae Asset Securities Co., SK C&C Co., and Korea Investment & Securities Co. have also agreed to collaborate with Naver.

Meanwhile, Choi said the company plans to utilize AI to address issues such as the proliferation of fake news and deepfakes, which cleverly synthesize fake photos and videos to make them look real.

“Hallucination created by generative AI will be one of the challenges to be addressed by AI developing companies,” Choi said. “As hyper-scale AI is still in its early stages, we are working to develop technologies that can improve its limitations, as well as to provide information based on reliable sources and verify the consistency of existing accumulated data to increase reliability and recency.”