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| Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon speaks during a press conference at the company's new office building in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, April 13, 2022. Courtesy of Naver |
Internet firm posts record sales of 8 tril. won in 2022 thanks to content exports
By Baek Byung-yeul
Naver will release a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) service similar to ChatGPT within the first half of this year as part of the internet company's efforts to diversify its business portfolio, its CEO said, Friday.
"We are preparing measures in response to new search trends such as generative AI. Our goal is to introduce Naver's own improved search service called SearchGPT within the first half of this year," Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon told investors during a conference call on fourth-quarter earnings results.
She added, "We are confident that we can solve the weak points of generative AI, such as reliability, timeliness and overseas AI service inaccuracy issues caused by translating English-based models into Korean, by combining abundant user data with our technological capability."
ChatGPT is an emerging conversational AI service, launched by U.S.-based AI company OpenAI. With its large amounts of data and computing technologies, ChatGPT interacts with users conversationally.
Choi's remarks can be interpreted as confidence that Naver has the best technology among Korea-based AI services at a time when ChatGPT's superior service quality is threatening existing search engines like Google.
"We are internally conducting experiments to improve the quality of search results and user experience by presenting answers for searches that require advice such as how to buy laptops at an affordable price," the CEO said.
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Naver posted 8.22 trillion won ($6.69 billion) in sales in 2022, up 20.6 percent year-on-year, while its operating profit came in at 1.3 trillion won, down 1.6 percent. For the fourth quarter of 2022 from October to December, it logged 2.27 trillion won in sales and 336.5 billion won in operating profit.
Naver said this was the first time for the company to post annual sales of over 8 trillion won and the growth was possible thanks to its content exports. It said the sales of its content business, which provide online comics and online novels, grew 100.1 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2021.
Naver's content business posted sales of 1.26 trillion won for 2022, up 91.3 percent year-on-year, as paid users in Japan increased by 25 percent from the year before.
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