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In a media roundtable held under the theme of “NAVER’s AI and Content Strategy in the AI Era” on May 28, 2026, NAVER CDO (Chief Data & Contents Officer) Kim Kwang-hyun underscored that the focus of AI platform competition has shifted from model performance to data quality and service competitiveness. The CDO noted that NAVER will provide a differentiated user experience that is based on a strong integration with the creative ecosystem as well as the three core assets of AI search. The main takeaways are summarized below.

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AI Era’s Competition Driven by Data and Content Capability

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As AI model performance converges toward a higher standard, the axis of competition is shifting. It is no longer about the number of parameters or GPU scale, but about the quality of data and content, and how they are integrated into the user experience.

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NAVER began as a search engine service provider in 1999, and has since developed a UGC (user-generated content) ecosystem consisting of Knowledge iN, NAVER Blog, and NAVER Cafe. With the outset of widespread mobile device use, NAVER furthered its growth by concentrating on search environment optimization as well as shopping and localized search services. Now, NAVER seeks to expand into the domain of generative AI search.

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NAVER has continued to earn user trust through shifting search paradigms by building on its unparalleled technology and proprietary data and content. Today, approximately 20 million creators are active on the NAVER platform, generating over 630 million pieces of content each year. These are NAVER's most powerful assets — ones that cannot be replicated.

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NAVER’s UGC Ecosystem is One with a “Human Touch” – One Trillion KRW to be Invested Over Five Years

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At the heart of any search algorithm is helping users find great creators. This principle holds true in the AI era as well. Since January of this year, NAVER's UGC has accounted for 70% of all content cited in AI Briefings. Because UGC carries rich sociocultural context, it is what sets the AI service experience apart. With this in mind, NAVER is launching a new AI creator fellowship program, NAVER MATE, and plans to invest one trillion KRW over the next five years to build a foundation where great creators can consistently thrive and grow.

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An Integrated AI Agent Only NAVER Can Build

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To translate quality data and content to its services, NAVER is building an integrated AI agent based on three core assets: product-native LLM, data & tool, and harness engineering*.

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*Harness engineering is a technical framework that achieves both cost efficiency and service quality through effective operation, control, and optimization to stabilize the application of an AI model to a service. It is grounded in nearly three decades of large-scale service experience that NAVER has accumulated.

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NAVER's AI has been purpose-built for services where real user actions take place — search, shopping, and reservations — and is now live across more than ten services, including AI Briefing, AI Tab, and the AI Shopping Agent. On top of this, NAVER's database of over 10 billion product and business listing data, combined with user reviews and UGC, is integrated with a wide range of service APIs to complete an integrated AI agent capable of delivering a seamless experience from search and recommendations all the way through to payment.

Through this, NAVER's AI search is evolving from a search that gives you answers to a search that helps you get things done. NAVER’s AI Briefing has a monthly active user (MAU) base of 30 million, and the beta release of the AI Tab saw 36% of users return within one week, with 71% of its feedback being positive. These numbers indicate that user expectation for agentic AI is growing. NAVER will continue to integrate the technology, operational know-how, data, and content it has accumulated to improve its AI services. ●

► Learn More About AI Briefing – NAVER’s Culmination of AI Technology (Link)