Kakao introduces its first ever AI assistant Kanana

Chung Shin-a, CEO of Kakao, delivers a keynote speech at the ‘if kakao AI 2024’ developer conference held at Kakao AI Campus in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, on the 22nd. (Kakao)

South Korean platform giant Kakao Corp. has officially entered the artificial intelligence (AI) competition by unveiling its hyper-personalized conversational AI assistant service, Kanana. Kakao aims to embed AI across its key businesses, including its messaging app KakaoTalk, autonomous vehicles, and commerce, by using the service AI strategy that combines Kakao’s own language model with other global and Korean models.

The company held its “if kakao AI 2024” developer conference on Tuesday, where it introduced Kanana and its overall AI strategy.

“Kakao’s core competitive strength lies in connecting relationships,” Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a said. “Even in this era of generative AI, we aim to focus on service-centered AI by leveraging our unique asset of relationships.”

Chung emphasized that Kakao’s idea of hyper-personalized AI involves understanding a variety of contexts and providing tailored responses, going beyond typical chatbot services that mechanically answer questions. The goal is to create an AI Mate that offers personalized responses by analyzing past conversations.

Kanana comes in two versions - a personal AI and a group AI. The personal mate, Nana, engages in one-on-one conversations and remembers group conversations to offer personalized responses. It can help remind users of upcoming events discussed in a group chat, such as a conference or preparations, as well as allowing users to upload documents in various formats for summary and discussion purposes. Users can interact with the AI through both text and voice while the group mate, Kana, specializes in group chats.

According to Lee Sang-ho, head of Kakao’s KananaX team, most existing AI services, like ChatGPT, focus on one-on-one conversations. Kana, however, is the first AI designed to assist groups. Unlike Nana, which participates in both personal and group conversations in the Kanana app, Kana only assists within designated group chats.

A demonstration video showed Kana creating quiz questions based on a shared thesis document in a study group chat, grading answers, and providing explanations. Kana can also summarize past conversations for users who join a chatroom later via a whisper feature, and Kanana will be available as a separate app from KakaoTalk. Chung noted that an internal test version would be released by the end of 2024, with a full launch expected as early as 2025.

Another service, AI Commerce MD, which will launch in November 2024, will help users choose gifts by considering past exchanges and current trends. KakaoPay will also launch specialized AI services for fields such as insurance, real estate, and investment, with financial expert AI responding to users, and Kakao plans to expand the service to areas like consumption analysis, tax advice, and retirement planning by 2025.

The market reaction, however, was lukewarm. Kakao’s stock dropped by 5.2 percent on Tuesday from the previous day, reflecting concerns that Kanana cannot compete with KakaoTalk and that the announcement lacked significant innovation.