Naver headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province (Yonhap)

South Korean internet giant Naver announced Friday that a number of its research papers have been accepted at the annual Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, one of the world’s leading natural language processing conferences, amidst the company’s ongoing efforts to advance AI-driven technologies.

“We are proud to see our search technology being acknowledged on the global stage,” said Kim Kwang-hyun, head of Naver’s Search and Data Platform Division. “Our goal is to continue improving the accuracy and relevance of search results through AI advancements.”

One of the accepted papers focuses on Naver’s AI-driven search service, Cue:, which uses a small language model to detect harmful queries and provide appropriate responses. Launched in late 2023, this technology filters out inappropriate content such as illegal activities, privacy violations and offensive language, raising the standard for AI safety in search, the company explained.

Naver has also developed a new approach for handling complex information, such as lists and tables, with its “Knowledge Snippet” service that provides concise summaries at the top of search results. Slated to launch next year, this technology is expected to make it easier for users to get quick, accurate answers to even the most complicated questions.

Another accepted paper outlines a technique for integrating large language model ranking capabilities into smaller models without sacrificing speed. Since implementing this technology in June, Naver has seen a 4.3 percent increase in click-through rates and a 3 percent rise in user engagement, the company said.

The EMNLP conference, now in its 28th year, is widely considered one of the top international AI conferences in the NLP field, along with the North American Association for Computational Linguistics and the Association for Computational Linguistics. EMNLP 2024 will take place Nov. 12-16 in Miami, where Naver will present the four papers, including one on search technology that has already been applied to its services, the IT giant said.

Naver’s recognition at EMNLP adds to its growing list of achievements in 2024, with papers accepted at other prominent AI conferences such as NAACL and CVPR.