AI Platform Expansion
Leading internal portals in Korea such as Naver and Kakao are doing everything they can do to form alliances based on its AI platform. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics and even YG Entertainment and GS E&C, and others which seemed not to have much to do with portal services also took part in forging alliance.
According to the internet industry on October 11, Naver has recently been working closely with LG Electronics and Coway on how to apply Clova, its AI platform, to home appliances. LG Electronics is moving ahead with the application of Clova functions to Smart Sync Hub, a smart speaker hub product. This strategy aims to control air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, air cleaners, robot cleaners, etc. with voices through the wireless internet.
It is said that LG Electronics already loaded voice recognition functions of its own development into products launched in April this year, the company has much interest in Naver’s information and contents search functions. Technology that provides music and weather information can be easily added in cooperation with Naver.
There is also a plan on how to apply Clova to Coway air cleaners under discussion. Coway installed Amazon's AI platform Alexa in its US air purifiers. Technology that tells real-time air quality through voices among others were applied to them and can mix well with Clova. In the content field, Naver is joining forces with YG Entertainment because Naver believes that providing Clova with proprietary music and entertainment contents can give a big boost to Clova’s competitiveness as a platform.
Philips Hue, a global consumer lighting company, recently loaded a function to control lighting with smartphones into products that will hit the shelves in Korea. Naver also decided to install Clova in a Qualcomm IoT platform.
Kakao is also actively focusing on expanding its AI platform ecosystem. "We are discussing cooperation with various partners to apply the Kakao AI platform (Kakao I),” said Lim Ji-hoon, president of Kakao, in a press conference on September 20. Kakao recently announced that the company will make Samsung Electronics's AI platform Bixby and Kakao I interoperate. The interoperation function can control Kakao Talk with voices via the combination of Kakao I and Bixby installed in Samsung smartphones.
Kakao already established partnership with GS E&C and POSCO E&C and decided to apply its AI technology to products of home IoT company Commax. Hyundai Motor's new car, the Genesis G70, is equipped with Kakao’s speech recognition technology. Kakao is also working with the Lotte Group to apply technology to place orders with distributors with voices.
The two portals are employing strategy to preoccupy AI ecosystems and dial up scalability with IoT devices to encourage consumers to use their services more. "AI technology is characterized by the fact that as its coverage increases, its service quality rises. Users tend to flock to major platforms, portals have no choice but to secure more allies,” said Lee Kyung-joon, a professor of business administration at Kyunghee University.