Kakao will unveil the test version of its new artificial intelligence (AI) service, 'Kanana,' on 8th.
Chung Shina, the representative of Kakao, noted during a conference call following the announcement of the 2025 first quarter results that 'the strength of Kanana is that the more users utilize the service, the more conversations accumulate.' She added that 'as interactions between Kanana and users in group chat rooms accumulate, the level of hyper-personalization for AI mates based on personal and group context can be enhanced.'
The representative explained about Kanana, which starts with a closed beta testing (CBT) version, saying, 'It is more a process of testing service stability and checking what prompts users commonly use rather than a completed version in terms of functionality and design.' She further stated, 'Kanana is planned to be officially launched after going through upgrades starting with CBT.'
Kakao plans to expand its new AI services into shopping and local sectors. It is pursuing a business strategy to enhance platform convenience by integrating AI into specific field services (verticals). The company is collaborating with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, to achieve this goal. The products developed together by the two companies will be introduced sequentially.
The company stated, 'New AI services can create additional synergies by strongly integrating with existing businesses or contribute to increasing user participation by creating usage contexts that did not exist on the Kakao platform.'
Kakao's consolidated results for the first quarter of 2025 showed sales of 1.8637 trillion won and operating profit of 105.4 billion won, respectively. The operating profit margin is 5.7%. Compared to the same period last year, sales decreased by 6.3%, and operating profit dropped by 12.4%.