Naver hosted “DAN 23,” a conference to share the company’s technology direction and business strategy centered on generative AI, at the Grand Intercontinental Seoul Parnas on Thursday, April 24, inviting creators, vendors, investors, and other partners.

The conference showcased NAVER’s generative AI, HyperCLOVA X, as well as its conversational AI service, CLOVA X, and generative AI search, CUE:. NAVER’s generative AI products and changes to NAVER’s key services, including search, commerce and advertising, were also revealed.

In her keynote speech, CEO Choi emphasized that search and generative AI are no different in terms of meeting users’ needs and providing them with desired results, and that efforts to focus on users and identify their hidden intentions have been ongoing since before the advent of generative AI.

“Over the years, NAVER has applied various AI-based recommendation technologies to different areas such as search, shopping, booking, reviews, UGC, maps, and videos, advancing our technology and improving the user experience,” said Choi. “Our decades of experience in understanding users, expertise in service operations, and technical capabilities strongly support the competitiveness of HyperCLOVA X, the current backbone model for generative AI.”

Choi also said, “This is thanks to the advanced technology and high-quality data we have accumulated by consistently investing 22% of our operating revenue in R&D.” She added that a strong infrastructure such as our own IDC, which has never had an accident, is an important pillar of NAVER’s generative AI competitiveness.

In November, NAVER will open GAK Sejong, a hyperscale data center with a capacity of more than 600,000 servers, the largest in Asia by a single company, which will serve as the brain center for its ultra-large-scale AI.

“The focus of generative AI and various technology products based on it is to improve the competitiveness of users, providers and creators,” said Soo-yeon Choi, CEO of NAVER. “NAVER’s competitiveness lies in a ‘winning loop’ structure where various services and partners are connected to drive growth, which in turn leads to the growth of the platform, and HyperCLOVA X will further accelerate this winning loop.”

NAVER also introduced new services, including CLOVA X, a conversational AI service powered by HyperCLOVAX that begins beta testing today, and CUE:, a generative AI search that will launch in September. CLOVA X is a conversational AI service that can provide a variety of answers based on creation, summarization, inference, translation, coding, and more, enabling multi-turn conversations in which questions are asked and answered sequentially. In particular, ‘CLOVA X’ introduces the ‘skill’ feature, a system that connects various service APIs inside and outside of NAVER to supplement answers that are limited by the language model’s ability to generate answers alone, while providing an enhanced service experience that makes it easier to access various vertical services.

Starting in September, NAVER will also launch a beta service for “CUE:”, a new search service powered by HyperCLOVA X. CUE:, a generative AI search service, is characterized by its ability to understand long, complex queries with multiple intentions and provide three-dimensional search results using the most current and reliable information to generate answers.

In addition, NAVER is also introducing new generative AI-based technology tools for its partners, including merchants, creators and advertisers, to use immediately in their daily lives. Generative AI will be rapidly applied across NAVER’s services, including technology that enables merchants to improve the efficiency of their business operations, Clova for Writing, a writing tool that provides a new content creation experience for creators, and Clova for AD, a generative AI-based advertising product for advertisers.

“At NAVER, we dream of changing the world with technology,” said Soo-yeon Choi, CEO of NAVER, “and we are ready to embrace the new transformation of generative AI.” “We will support our merchants, creators and partners with powerful technologies and services so that they can grow in diversity.”

In addition to generative AI, other topics discussed at the event included NAVER LABS’ research on a robotic AI foundation model, NAVER’s AI ethics policy, discussions with startups to create an AI ecosystem, and the status and direction of TEAM NAVER’s various businesses, including NAVER Pay, NAVER Webtoon, and its global C2C business.