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Naver Corporation is investing KRW5.2 billion, or about $3.6 million, for a joint research project with Wattpad and the University of Toronto. It was reported that the investments would be used over the next five years for research on AI-based content service platforms.
Naver confirmed the financing scheme on Monday, Oct. 1. Wattpad has recently become part of the Naver group after the completion of its acquisition deal in May of last year. The two are set to work with the said public research university located in Ontario, Canada.
Wattpad is also based in Canada even after it was acquired by the South Korean tech and internet giant for an estimated value of $600 million. It was agreed that the storytelling platform would remain headquartered in the country, and its founders, Ivan Yuen and Allen Lau, have also retained their leadership.
As per The Korea Herald, Naver purchased Wattpad after seeing its huge potential. The latter’s app has more than 90 million users around the world, and they are said to be spending more than 23 billion minutes per month reading original stories and content.
The latest joint research that will be participated in by Naver, Wattpad, and the University of Toronto will allow the application of groundbreaking and exclusive technologies to Wattpad’s content platform. This is expected to improve the user experience and attract more sign-ups.
Some of the specific scopes of studies that will be undertaken in the research include Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Through this, they will develop technology that will assess content for recommendations to users based on their similar content interests or reading habits.
“Naver’s mega-scale technology capacity and infrastructure in AI would create synergy with the Unversity of Toronto’s professional capacity in AI technology and the world’s largest web-based literature platform Wattpad,” Naver’s AI Lab head, Ha Jung Woo, said in a statement.
He added, “We will create a more interactive user experience by developing a platform that can deeply understand user preferences, based on AI technology, which would then give freedom to create high-quality content.”
