Naver-Wattpad Invests 5.2 Billion KRW in AI Research... Collaboration with University of Toronto, Canada

Joint Research in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Applied to Wattpad Content Service Platform

Naver CFO Namseon Kim and Alex Mihailidis, Associate Vice-President of International Research Collaboration at the University of Toronto, held a 'Research Partnership Launch' event on the 28th at Naver 1784 to commemorate the start of their research collaboration.
[Photo by Naver]

[Asia Economy Reporter Yuri Choi] Naver and Wattpad announced on the 31st that they are officially launching a three-party collaboration with the University of Toronto in Canada to research and develop an AI-based next-generation content service platform.

On the 28th, Naver and the University of Toronto held a 'Research Partnership Launch' event at Naver 1784 to commemorate the start of their research collaboration. The event was attended by Naver CFO Namseon Kim, Clova CIC CEO Seokgeun Jeong, AI Lab Director Jungwoo Ha, Alex Mihailidis, Deputy Director of the University of Toronto's International Research Collaboration Office, and Director Ilan Kramer, among others.

Naver and Wattpad will invest approximately 5.2 billion KRW over the next five years to conduct joint AI research with the University of Toronto in the fields of natural language processing (NLP) and human-computer interaction (HCI). The technologies developed from this research will be applied to Wattpad's content service platform.

In the field of natural language processing (NLP), the collaboration will focus on research into content discrimination and analysis technologies for recommending similar content, natural language recognition technologies for understanding and summarizing long-form content, and measurement models for customer usage habits. In the HCI field, they plan to research intuitive creative tools and conversational interfaces based on AI.

Through this collaboration with the University of Toronto, Naver aims to expand the global AI research and development (R&D) ecosystem and contribute to AI technology cooperation between Korea and Canada. Naver has established joint AI research institutes with prestigious universities both domestically and internationally, including Seoul National University, KAIST, the University of T?bingen in Germany, and Vietnam's HUST and PTIT, and continues to collaborate with leading universities worldwide.

Director Ha said, “We expect synergy from combining Naver’s ultra-large-scale AI technology and infrastructure, Wattpad’s world’s largest web novel platform, and the University of Toronto’s AI expertise,” adding, “Based on AI technology, we will develop a platform where anyone can create high-quality content and that deeply understands users’ preferences to deliver an interactive user experience.”

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