KaKao

AI and kakao

 

The search box showing various results when people entered what they wanted to find was emblematic of the Internet era. It forced the power previously owned by encyclopedias and intellectuals to be shared with the public. While penetrating worldwide, American search engines, on the other hand, had little to show for years of hard slog in countries like Korea. Linguistic particularity and fierce competition among local search engines surrounded the nation's market as a moat.

 

The mobile era hit its stride as it continued, and the computing power thereby exploded. The power that had been disproportionately drawn from search engines started to lean toward artificial intelligence. Korean IT companies, including Kakao, then became fast-footed.

 

#Software company's first hardware development

Jargons like artificial intelligence (AI) or deep-learning have now become daily vocabulary to the extent that they require no further explanation. One of the indispensable adjunct events to the fundamental background behind this phenomenon was the Go match with 'AlphaGo' in 2016. The event, which showed the evolving computing power in the real world for the first time, was interpreted as a signal flare bringing down barriers between humans and machines.

 

In January 2017, Kakao organized the A TF to bring together AI-related potentials. Artificial intelligence was obviously nothing new or unfamiliar to the company. It had already operated various AI service products, such as Daum's CNN (convolutional neural networks)-based flower search, KakaoMap's voice search utilizing speech recognition technology, etc. And in February, Kakao built the AI business team with search technology engineers. The first task undertaken by the team was to develop an artificial intelligence speaker, which was in March 2017. At that time, speech recognition technology was evolving rapidly, and AI speakers were considered a means to provide overwhelming convenience converging to 'Zero Depth.' North America witnessed various success cases, including Amazon's Alexa. However, the Korean interface was just in its infancy, so Kakao decided to develop it as a new business pipeline. It was an area where Kakao could excel with its outstanding service domains such as KakaoTalk, Melon, KakaoTaxi, and Search.

 

The team set a goal to create Kakao i AI platform and speaker within six months. Half a year was a very short time even for Kakao Krews who were skillful at developing a new service, as it was to make a hardware device and related apps together for the first time since the company's inception.

 

"When we prepared for the release of KakaoMini, several companies introduced artificial intelligence speakers before us. No doubt that our linked services would excel over them, but we were also worried about not enjoying the lead time advantage. Eventually, it turned out to be nothing but unfounded fears. Our teaser site that was released in the second half of 2017 attracted a huge amount of attention. We sold out 15,000 units prepared for the first sale in November only in 9 minutes. The following year, a cumulative 200,000 units of the first generation KakaoMini came out of the factory for the two additional sales. It was the result of competing barefoot against products that had various additional benefits." Zodiac's account.   

 

Since then, devices such as KakaoMini C, Mini Link, Mini Hexa have added to the Kakao i ecosystem.

 

 

#Finding more user touchpoints

The explosive response to KakaoMini stimulated Kakao and its potential partners to have imagination. ‘What if we work with Kakao's speech recognition technology?’ More and more companies got such an idea. Kakao started designing a new user experience with the goal of ‘a more convenient driving life,’ partnering with Hyundai Motor Group that carried out the collaborative Voice Navigation Improvement Project in 2017.

 

Kakao i's in-vehicle conversational voice assistant was embedded into a new line of Hyundai Sonata released in March 2019 after about 14months of collaboration. With only voice commands, it was possible to use more than ten functions, including news briefing, weather report, movie and TV information, stock price information, translation, and natural language navigations. Also, drivers could change the environment in their cars simply by speaking "Remove moisture" or "Change the wind direction downwards."

 

The two major construction and housing brands in Korea, POSCO THE SHARP and GS Xi, adopted Kakao i's smart home technology. Connected with both speech and conversation recognition engines, Kakao i allowed residents to enjoy controlling the in-house environment via KakaoMini and KakaoTalk messages. It went beyond controlling IoT devices and became a stepping stone for implementing advanced services through lifestyle data analysis.

 

#Departure of Kakao Enterprise

If the two years until 2018 were when Kakao's artificial intelligence confirmed various possibilities, 2019 was the year for taking a leap onto another stage and realizing the evolution of the AI platform. Kakao i was advanced with MRC (Machine Reading Comprehension) and deep-learning-based TTS (Text to Sound) technology. External partnerships have been further diversified based on its proven B2B collaboration capabilities. It was the result of harmonizing the company's interactive platform, deep-learning platform, and various vertical services with rich experience internalized. 

 

The AI team was rebuilt as CIC (Company-In-Company) and designed a new business model to target industrial demands and enterprises' customer-oriented demands. The goal was to implement the worldwide digital transformation trend in Kakao's way.

 

The CIC, launched in May 2019, was comprised of 500 Krews, including the previous AI team, Kakao Search Engine team, and company-wide Agit team. Andrew, who was a Ph.D. in Engineering and proved his new business and B2B expertise in the LG Group, was appointed as the first CEO.

 

At the town-hall meeting announcing the launch of CIC on May 2, 2019, Andrew said, "We can't identify a representative company that spearheads business innovation with digital technology in Korea, but I decided to join Kakao since it is the right fit for it. Kakao has vast experience in handling large traffic volume, various services, and base technologies." He added, "And we will aim to become a digital transformation enabler for enterprise customers."

On December 3, 2019, when developing KakaoWork under the project name 'BizTalk,' the CIC became independent as Kakao Enterprise. Its slogan was ‘Add AI to connect everything, solve problems and create a new value.’ A step towards the platform-as-a-service (PasS) and software-as-a-service (Saas) fields, which Kakao had never been to, eventually begun.

 

#Kakao i heading for the business area

Kakao's various businesses are considered most familiar and convenient among Koreans. Paradoxically, however, they lacked touchpoints with local companies and office workers. Kakao showed explosive growth mainly in B2C but was only a 'newbie' in the B2B field.

 

The news of Kakao Enterprise's investment attraction, announced just past the first year of its inception, was enough to stir up the IT industry. That was because the company succeeded in attracting 100 billion KRW, the most significant scale of investment since the establishment of KDB Industrial Bank. It was due to Kakao Enterprise's AI-based innovation capability and service operation know-how for the integrated work platform, such as KakaoWork and Kakao i Cloud, and Kakao i Insight, the then-unreleased data analysis platform.

 

‘What if Kakao did?’ That curiosity and anticipation made our everyday lives better and had Kakao equip itself in all its finery. ‘What if we could work with Kakao's AI technology?’ This ongoing curiosity and anticipation in the industry are expected to bring about even more significant changes and innovations.

 

"We who live our daily lives and we at work are the same beings and different beings at the same time. As Kakao has a wealth of experience in solving everyday problems and creating new value, it can better plan and design new experiences connecting consumers to business, and business to business."

 

'Why are the default functions and fun elements on my smartphone not provided in the in-house work platform?' 'Why does it take so much time, or sometimes is it impossible to apply new services that are easily accessible on smartphones to work platforms?' 'Why should we pay tens or hundreds times the price in the enterprise market to buy an app that can be purchased at a low price on the App Store?' We started from these fundamental questions.

 

Life innovation geared by AI technology is just beginning to sprout. Please look forward to seeing the incredible process of buds growing into trees and forming a forest." _ Andrew