Hyundai Motor, Experiencing Kakao Voice Recognition Outage, Plans to Develop Own Solution

Hyundai Motor Decides to Establish Backup Server for Voice Recognition Search

Hey Kakao Service Provided by Car Voice Recognition

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Dae-yeol] Hyundai Motor Group has decided to pursue a plan to enable in-vehicle voice recognition search functions through its own servers. This measure comes in response to the inconvenience faced by vehicle consumers when Kakao's voice recognition function went down due to a data center fire.

According to industry sources on the 17th, the voice recognition search function in the infotainment systems of Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis vehicles is linked with Kakao. When searching for destinations not previously stored in the vehicle via voice recognition or looking for various media content, the system routes through Kakao's servers. This function did not operate during the recent fire incident.

Hyundai Motor Group is now considering establishing backup servers to prepare for emergencies such as future accidents. While maintaining the voice recognition search function through Kakao as before, this is to ensure that users can use the feature without issues even when external problems cause malfunctions.

Hyundai Motor Group employees are testing artificial intelligence voice recognition technology.

A company official stated, "Some vehicle functions did not operate normally due to the recent fire, and as a measure to supplement this, we plan to prepare a backup solution," adding, "We intend to establish a process that recognizes in-vehicle voice commands and connects with external servers to search and display results independently."

The infotainment systems of Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis vehicles are mostly internalized. While the hardware itself is produced by affiliates such as Hyundai Mobis or LG Electronics, the operating system and specific applications used to operate the system are decided by the vehicle manufacturers. Voice recognition-based searches and music streaming have been conducted in collaboration with external companies.

For example, if the address of 'Asia Economy' is separately stored in the driver's vehicle infotainment system, it was possible to recognize the voice and directly provide the route to the destination without going through Kakao's servers. When not separately stored, the voice recognition results are searched online and then presented to the user. This search process requires routing through Kakao's servers. Hyundai Motor Group plans to maintain this method but will implement a dual system capable of independent searching to prevent user inconvenience.

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