Naver Corp., South Korea's top Internet portal operator, plans to unveil an artificial intelligence embedded smart speaker, the WAVE, this summer, industry sources said Tuesday.
According to the sources, Naver and its Japanese affiliate LINE Corp. are working to launch the smart speaker based on its AI virtual assistant, Clova CLOud Virtual Assistant, before the end of the first half.
Naver Corp.'s auto infotainment platform, IVI (Yonhap)
The WAVE speaker is said to be unveiled in Japan under the brand of LINE, and Naver is also considering launching it in South Korea.
Clova, which is similar to Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri, combines speech recognition and natural language understanding to respond to a user's questions or to call up information, such as the weather.
Unlike previously launched AI platforms, Clova will utilize big data to provide various customized services depending on a user's culture and geography, the sources said.
The company is also working to showcase AI-based self-driving technologies and an infotainment platform for connected cars.
Naver, the country's first IT firm with level-three autopilot technology, has recently unveiled a prototype of its In-Vehicle Infotainment platform, known as IVI, which operates on a voice assistant-based user interface.
The platform allows users to enjoy Naver map and navigation services through the voice assistant program. (Yonhap)
