Naver to test AI search tab after Google Gemini launch

Naver said on April 24 it will begin a closed beta of AI Tab, after Google launched Gemini in Chrome in the country.

AI Tab will sit beside Naver’s existing search tabs and give users a separate space for conversational queries instead of the summary format used in AI Briefing.

Naver said it will invest more than 100 billion won (US$67.4 million), through 2028 to build structured training data with partners including EBS and Doosan.

Internet Trend data showed Naver held 63.83% of South Korea’s search market, while Google had 28.67%.

🔗 Source: The Korea Herald

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Naver’s data partnerships answer AI trust concerns

Naver’s alliance with EBS, South Korea’s public educational broadcaster, aims to build a reliable video knowledge archive to tackle trust issues tied to AI hallucinations 1.
The company is taking the same approach in industry. It signed a deal with Doosan, the South Korean industrial group, to create structured training data for AI services.
The new AI Tab builds on Naver’s existing AI search tool, AI Briefing. Naver plans to expand AI Briefing to 20% of integrated search queries by the end of 2025 2.
AI Briefing draws more engagement. Its click-through rate runs 8 percentage points above traditional search results, which gives Naver a base for the new chat-style format 2.

The race for better data is global, with licensing fights close behind

Naver’s data push also reaches overseas. It increased its stake in Wallapop, a Spanish consumer-to-consumer marketplace for secondhand goods, to secure long-tail commerce data for AI development 2.
Regional tech groups around the world are building their own datasets to compete with US-based AI models.
Naver also faces a copyright lawsuit from Korean broadcasters over the use of news content in AI training 3.
The case could shape how AI companies license content and pay creators in South Korea. That outcome may change model economics and cut off data sources that were once available 3.