Naver Webtoon's artificial intelligence-based chat service "Character Chat" (Kyarachato) has surpassed 5 million cumulative messages within two months of its launch in Japanese.
Naver Webtoon said Tuesday that the milestone was achieved after the company introduced the Character Chat feature on its Japanese service LINE Manga on February 24, driven by strong popularity among Gen Z users, those born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
Character Chat is a chatbot service that allows readers to converse with webtoon characters based on data analyzing their personalities, speech patterns and story context. Since its launch in Korea in June 2024, the service has recorded 6 million cumulative users and 230 million cumulative messages.
In Japan, the debut chatbot featuring "Teodor" from "My In-Laws Are Obsessed With Me" tripled the number of readers and boosted sales of the original work sixfold.
Building on this momentum, the service has added its second character, "Ko Eun-hyuk" (Japanese name: Tachibana Ren), the male lead of "Operation: True Love." The series is a high-teen romance depicting the precarious relationship between high school students "Shim Su-ae" and "Ko Eun-hyuk," set in a unique world where the amount of love each person receives in their lifetime is predetermined.
