Naver Speeds Up Unified AI Agent as Kakao, Baemin Expand

Building on vertical agents

The unified agent is meant to connect the vertical agents Naver has already rolled out. In February it added a shopping AI agent to the Naver Plus Store app. In June it introduced "AI Tab", a conversational AI search service, and in September it launched "Place Agent" in Naver Map, which lets users search for and get recommendations on places by chatting with AI, and then make reservations. The unified agent is expected to bring these together on one screen.

Naver is responding to a shifting market. Services such as Meta's Muse, OpenAI's Dots and Pickle, built by a Korean-founded startup, are pushing competition beyond understanding requests toward actually carrying out tasks.

Kakao and Baemin follow

Kakao plans to begin a closed beta test next month of Kanana Space, an integrated AI assistant summoned from within KakaoTalk by text or voice. It handles tasks such as adding calendar entries, web searches, checking digital cards and changing KakaoTalk settings, with shopping orders, gifting, reservations and money transfers planned later. Kakao is also widening natural-language search through Kanana in KakaoTalk, which uses conversation context to find information and suggest products or places, and Kanana in KakaoMap, which suggests restaurants and cafes from conditions typed as sentences.

Baemin has run a closed beta of conversational AI search since October 20. Using a large language model, it interprets the intent and context of everyday sentences and recommends matching restaurants, rather than requiring users to browse lists or search by keyword. After checking stability, the company plans to widen access in stages.

Together, the moves show Korea's platform competition moving from search to execution.