Naver to launch chatbot that will rival ChatGPT

Naver is releasing its own chatbot to compete with ChatGPT. The new product was said to be the company’s own version of the chatbot that was developed by OpenAI will, an American artificial intelligence company.

Naver is planning to release this software application to the South Korean market within the first half of 2023. The company said late last week that it is making this move as a response to the high popularity of the chatbot system.

Naver made the announcement of its intention to launch its own chatbot after revealing sluggish financial results for 2022, which have been weaker than expected. According to Korea Joongang Daily, the tech and internet firm’s chief executive officer, Choi Soo Yeon, said that it will introduce its chatbot called “SearchGPT” soon.

This will center on queries in Korean, and the name is a shortened term for Search Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. It is a free chatbot system that can engage in conversational dialogue. It can also generate human-like text, including story summaries and articles.

“We will respond to the new trend of generative AI,” Naver chief Choi Soo Yeon, said. “We will solve the weaknesses of ChatGPT such as its low reliability, shortage of up-to-date information and lower accuracy when translating from English into Korean.”

In the initial phase, rather than being integrated with Naver’s own search engine, SearchGPT will operate as a standalone beta service. Naver’s announcement pushed the company’s stock price up as it soared 5.67%, which is close to KRW223,500 on Friday, Feb. 3. The increase was notable because the company recorded a steep decline in net profits in 2022.

Meanwhile, The Dong-A Ilbo reported that aside from Naver, Alphabet’s Google is also testing its own chatbot AI model to compete with ChatGPT as well. The Korean publication stated that the possible release of Naver’s SearchGPT is by the end of June, while Google’s version is also coming in a few weeks.