Kakao's new AI messaging app will speak in the voices of K-pop idols

Kakao is set to launch Kanana, an AI-integrated messenger app that offers scheduling, entertainment recommendations, and group interaction features.

Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a presents renamed AI brand "Kanana" and unveiled related services at the company's annual developer conference in Yongin, Gyeonggi, on Tuesday. [KAKAO]

Kakao, the company behind Korean messaging behemoth KakaoTalk, announced plans to roll out an AI-integrated messenger app — through which will summarize text messages, track schedules and recommend entertainment based on chat history .

The company showcased the app, dubbed Kanana, at its ifkakaoAI 2024 developer conference in Yongin, Gyeonggi, on Tuesday.

Kanana symbolizes “the AI most like myself,” combining its creator's name with the word “native,” indicating that it learns and behaves like its users, and “natural,” signifying an intuitive technology with a low barrier to entry.

The app will include two characters, or “AI Mates.” Individual users will interact with Nana, which can remind them of upcoming appointments or important dates and summarize reading material, via both text and voice. Groups will interact with Kana, which can whip up quizzes related to papers they've read, grade responses and offer explanations. Kana can also talk discretely to certain members of a chat through a “whisper” function — perhaps useful, Kakao suggests, if one wishes to quickly find a spot for a date or a meeting without informing the rest of the chat that they're consulting AI — and summarize past conversations for users who join the chat late.

“Major global AI services, including ChatGPT, are focused on one-to-one conversations,” said Lee sang-ho, head of the Kanana X department that oversees Kakao’s AI services. “We believe that Kanana will be the world’s first AI to offer its services based on group contexts.”

Users can even set the AI's voice to K-pop artists that are signed to Kakao Entertainment.

“Thank you for visiting the AI campus even on this rainy day,” the voice of IVE member Jang Won-young said at the conference upon request from CEO Chung Shin-a.

Kakao did not state which AI models will power the characters in its app, only implying that the platform will fuse its in-house technology with those of large third-party firms.

Kanana is currently undergoing internal testing, and is scheduled to be released as a beta format for Kakao employees this year.

Though the messaging app is the first, Kakao plans to release additional business-to-consumer AI products, including several different large language models (LLM), under the Kanana brand in a move to eke more profit out of the fast-growing technology. The company is in dire need of a breakthrough amid its regulatory crisis, which includes the arrest of its founder, Kim Beom-su, for alleged stock manipulation and government sanctions targeting its key subsidiaries such as Kakao Mobility and Kakao Pay.

Kakao’s AI business has been lagging behind competitors, including its downtown rival Naver. The conglomerate first entered the sector under its former AI research and development (R&D) unit, Kakao Brain. The subsidiary, which was absorbed back into its parent organization earlier this year, introduced KoGPT, a Korean-language LLM based on OpenAI’s GPT-3, in 2021 without reaping significant results. The launch of an upgraded KoGPT 2.0 has since been postponed.

Kakao underwent management restructuring under Chung, its new chief, this year. Chung created a new dedicated AI division, also called “Kanana,” and integrated its AI R&D personnel of the former KakaoBrain.

The division consists of Kanana Alpha, focused on AI models, and Kanana X, which develops AI services.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]