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| Kakao's artificial intelligence based chatbot service, ddmm / Courtesy of Kakao |
By Park Jae-hyuk
Kakao users expressed their disappointment with ddmm, Kakao's new artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbot service, which became unavailable Monday, just a day after the launch of its beta service.
Although the Korean IT firm promised to resume the service soon, incorrect answers made by the chatbot caused concerns that the company may lose its ground amid the intensifying global competition to dominate the generative AI market.
When Kakao decided abruptly on Monday afternoon to suspend its chatbot service similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, it cited the unexpectedly high number of ddmm users, which surpassed 12,000.
"There will be a further announcement on our plan to resume the service," Kakao said.
Its decision, however, has been attributed mainly to growing complaints from users, who compared ddmm negatively with ChatGPT.
"As I heard that ddmm can draw pictures, I asked it to draw some pictures," one ddmm user said. "However, it just shared the URLs of websites related to those pictures."
Another user pointed out that Kakao's chatbot took about 10 minutes to answer a query.
Industry officials also criticized Kakao for its failure to predict the number of users willing to test ddmm's beta service. Some critics regarded the company as amateurish, considering the fact that the number of monthly active users of Kakao's messenger app, KakaoTalk, exceeds 48 million.
Kakao Brain, a Kakao subsidiary specializing in AI technologies, acknowledged the defects in ddmm.
"Due to ddmm's technological features, we do not guarantee the accuracy and credibility of its answers, and its answers could include some inappropriate expressions," the company said. "When using the answers, users shall take all the responsibility."
During Kakao's conference call last month on its fourth-quarter earnings, the company unveiled its plan to come up with a vertical AI service by the end of this year.
"The appearance of ChatGPT will create both opportunities and crises for Kakao," Kakao CEO Hong Eun-taek said at that time. "Instead of vying with global companies, we will focus on a vertical AI service utilizing Kakao Brain's KoGPT, which is fluent in Korean."
Regardless of the abrupt suspension of ddmm, Kakao will integrate its AI technologies with KakaoTalk's email and schedule notification functions, in order to provide more personalized services.
"We anticipate our service will play a role as a private secretary," the Kakao CEO said last month.
Industry officials expect competition to intensify over the market for AI-powered search engines, in the wake of ChatGPT fever.
The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry's survey of 1,016 adults last month showed that more than 30 percent of respondents had used ChatGPT. In addition, only 10 percent of the respondents answered that they do not trust ChatGPT's answers.
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