[THE INVESTOR] Korean Internet giant Naver plans to unveil its own voice recognition system specialized in Korean language next year, industry sources said on July 13.

Based on its own data analysis and artificial intelligence technology, the company aims to unveil the system mimicking Apple’s Siri as early as in January next year.

Global IT companies are rolling out their own voice recognition systems mostly in English but it is rare for them to offer Korean language service due to their lack of data collected in Korean. 



IBM recently said its AI system Watson has recently started studying Korean language. But considering the system’s English ability, the similar level of a native teenager, its fluency in Korea remains to be seen.

In the meantime, Naver, operator of the nation’s largest search engine, owns an enormous amount of data in Korea. It has already offered voice recognition and translation services based on its own AI technology.

The company has teamed up with local language institutions with aims to propose the platform to the Korean government in January.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)