Kakao (035720.KS) said Tuesday it held a colloquium (academic exchange program) at Kakao AI Campus in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, on the 22nd.
The colloquium was held as part of "Kanana Scholar," an artificial intelligence (AI) cooperation program, to share Kakao's AI technologies and research directions with academia and to expand free social and intellectual exchange between industry and academia. Kakao employees who develop AI models, along with the Kanana Scholar advisory group of professors and researchers, participated to share the latest AI research achievements and technology application cases.
Kanana Scholar is an AI cooperation program launched by Kakao in March for the purpose of exchange with academic experts and future talent. The expert advisory group consists of seven professors from leading domestic universities in AI and computing fields, providing consultation on Kakao's overall AI technology and services.
At this event, Kakao introduced its proprietary foundation model and research on model advancement for service application. The company shared research directions and service application cases in major AI technology areas, including the Kanana foundation model, agentic AI, multimodal models, and AI safety, while discussing collaboration possibilities with academia.
During the subsequent poster session, researchers from laboratories at KAIST, Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and Hanyang University — where the Kanana Scholar advisory professors are affiliated — presented their latest research achievements, focusing on large language models (LLMs) and multimodal AI.
Presentation topics covered cutting-edge technologies with high potential for actual AI service application, including improving inference efficiency and reliability of LLM agents, strengthening multimodal AI safety, federated learning-based model personalization, ultra-long video understanding, real-time lip-sync generation, and 3D vision and human-object interaction modeling. Participants continued discussions on the direction and application potential of next-generation AI technologies through the poster session and networking program.
"This colloquium was a venue where Kakao's AI researchers and academic researchers shared the latest AI technologies and research achievements and discussed collaboration possibilities," a Kakao official said. "We will continue to expand ongoing exchange with academia through Kanana Scholar and strengthen our AI technology and service competitiveness."
