Naver announced recently that its content consumption has increased because of applying Artificial Intelligence-based personalization services to news and search. Naver plans to gradually expand its personalization search applied to some users this year. On April 5, Naver held the “Naver AI Collegium 2019” at the Grand Intercontinental Hotel in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul, and announced its know-how in applying AI technologies and actual services that Naver is working on.
Naver’s Search & Clova leader Kim Kwang-hyun, who took charge of the keynote speech, said that content consumption increased sharply because of applying its AI content recommendation algorithm “AiRS” to Naver and Line News services. The daily average page view of AI content exposed to Naver’s news edition increased 69 percent in a year. The number of daily users in four foreign countries increased by 176 percent.
Naver announced in May last year it would pull out of news editing with its AI-recommended system at the forefront. It applied it through a mobile app service overhaul in October, and the same format was applied to the mobile Web on April 3rd. Then, on April 4th, the company replaced major news articles of the previous version of the mobile app with automatically recommended articles based on algorithms, which had been provided with its own editing. Naver is also applying a personalization service to search. Personalized searches have been applied as beta services since August 3 last year, with 1 percent of Naver’s total users experiencing them. Instead of providing the same search results to everyone, this service shows optimal results based on the intention of individual search.
Leader Kim Kwang-hyun said, “As a result of applying personalization search, the consumption of content exposed to the top has quadrupled.” He said it is adding value to existing content through AI technology. Naver will continue to expand its personalization search this year. As examples of AI technology enhancing the value of existing content, it the company mentioned “Auto Highlight” technology based on the meta-extraction technology applied to Naver’s “V-Live” Auto Cam service and OCR technology applied to Japan’s “Conomi,” a service that recommends restaurants.
