Krafton said on Feb. 23 it will appoint Lee Kang-wook (이강욱), head of its artificial intelligence division, as its new chief AI officer (CAIO). The CAIO is the top executive overseeing Krafton’s AI research and development and long-term technology strategy. Krafton has created the CAIO post.

The company said it highly valued the CAIO’s expertise in AI, as well as his research track record, leadership and execution experience accumulated while conducting AI technology research and running projects in parallel.

The CAIO will focus on long-term technology expansion, including physical AI, with advancing game AI R&D as the core. He also plans to lead Krafton’s long-term new business by heading Ludo Robotics, which will be set up as a separate company, to research core AI capabilities and the strengths of a game company.

The CAIO is an expert who has studied AI broadly, including deep learning and machine learning. He earned a PhD in electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley in 2016 and has served as a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2019.

Since 2022, he has also served as head of Krafton’s AI division. He reorganised Krafton’s AI research framework and advanced its technical capabilities. In particular, he oversaw a collaboration project with Nvidia last year and unveiled a CPC (Co-Playable Character) that lets users and AI interact in real time.

Krafton plans to use the appointment to advance its game AI R&D framework and strengthen its long-term business strategy based on core technologies. It also aims to further develop AI as a tool that expands developers’ creativity and innovates user experience.

Krafton’s AI strategy will be pursued around three pillars: innovating user experience, improving production and operations efficiency, and securing long-term new growth engines.

For user experience innovation, it will advance AI technologies that can be used in games and improve the completeness of AI-based interactive content such as CPC. Krafton will continue to strengthen key AI technologies that can be applied directly to games to build a shared foundation. Each studio will maintain its own creative autonomy on that foundation and selectively use AI functions according to project characteristics.

In improving production and operations efficiency, it will support developers so they can focus on creative planning and implementation by reducing repetitive and consumptive tasks. In production, it will advance data analysis and production support technologies. In operations, it will use user data to raise service quality and stability. It will build a more efficient development environment to systematically underpin creative capabilities.

In long-term new business, it will continue research into physical AI and robotics based on core AI capabilities and the strengths of a game company. The research will be 추진ed through a separate company, and it is preparing a structure with a parent company in the United States and a subsidiary in South Korea.

The corporate name will be Ludo Robotics, and the South Korean entity will be led by the CAIO. Krafton said it sees large-scale interactive data accumulated in game development and operations and experience operating virtual worlds as meaningful competitiveness across physical AI and robotics research. It is paying particular attention to the long-term research potential of validating, in virtual environments, areas where repeated experiments are difficult in real-world settings, focusing on software that handles robot intelligence.

Lee said Krafton views AI not as a technology that replaces humans and creation, but as a tool that broadens imagination and creativity. He added that the company will also review long-term expansion possibilities based on AI technology and data around its core business of games.