Naver and KAIST Establish AI Joint Research Center with Hundreds of Billions Investment

Naver COO Choi In-hyuk (right) and KAIST AI Graduate School Dean Jeong Song

[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] Naver is establishing an artificial intelligence (AI) joint research center with KAIST.

On the 24th, Naver announced that it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the KAIST Graduate School of AI for "research development in the AI field and securing global AI leadership."

Following research cooperation in the AI field with Seoul National University, Naver will also collaborate with the KAIST Graduate School of AI.

Naver and the KAIST Graduate School of AI will establish a joint research center called the "KAIST-Naver Ultra-Creative AI Research Center" at Naver and embark on joint research and development of new AI technologies utilizing ultra-large-scale AI.

This AI helps anyone create high-quality multimedia content if they have a good story and creative ideas. To this end, over 100 researchers from Naver and KAIST AI will participate, and investments worth hundreds of billions of won will be made over three years.

The joint center will be co-led by Ha Jung-woo, head of Naver AI Lab, and Professor Joo Jae-gul of the KAIST Graduate School of AI.

The KAIST Graduate School of AI research team, consisting of about ten professors and dozens of researchers, will participate in ultra-creative AI research. They will actively communicate and conduct research in the same space through the joint research center alongside Naver researchers.

Along with human resources, plans are underway to discuss the utilization of hardware infrastructure and data owned by Naver at the joint research center. Naver possesses a vast amount of content data such as videos and webtoons that can be used for research, and it is continuously advancing production technologies for high-quality content creation.

Efforts to nurture AI specialists will also be carried out. Naver researchers will serve as adjunct professors to teach and guide research for KAIST Graduate School of AI students, and will actively support KAIST AI graduate students' internships and industry-academia cooperation dispatches at Naver.

Choi In-hyuk, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Naver, said, "From the broad scope of cooperation ranging from AI technology research to talent development to the close collaboration method of establishing a joint research center, this agreement presents an advanced industry-academia cooperation model between Naver and KAIST. Through this, we will successfully conduct joint research on ultra-large-scale AI as well as creative AI, known as challenging and new technology, and strive to elevate the research capabilities of Naver and KAIST to the next level, contributing to the enhancement of domestic AI technology competitiveness."

Jung Song, Dean of the KAIST Graduate School of AI, said, "Through this new form of industry-academia cooperation model with Naver, we will produce impactful research outcomes at a level that will astonish the world, serving as a stepping stone to stand shoulder to shoulder with leading institutions in industry and academia that pioneer the latest AI technologies such as Google, Facebook, Stanford, and Berkeley."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.