[DigitalToday reporter Daegeon Seok] Naver’s search experience is being reshaped around conversational AI. Naver said on Thursday it is officially launching its generative AI-based conversational search service, AI tab, to all users. Users can start AI search with one button from the search bar on Naver’s main page, which draws an average 50 million daily visitors. Green Dot, which has served as a mobile-era search entry point, will be replaced by AI tab.

Functions that were housed in Green Dot have been rearranged. Smart Lens, a multimodal search tool for searching with photos and images, is now placed separately next to the AI tab button to maintain accessibility, and the music search function has been integrated into AI tab. From July, users will also be able to enter AI tab from the chat window at the bottom of AI Briefing and continue exploring.

AI tab began beta service in April for Naver Plus Membership users and surpassed 4 million cumulative users in about 2 months. During the beta period, click-through rates for product and place cards each topped 20 percent. Users who visited AI tab 11 times or more showed product clicks 2.7 times and place clicks 2 times higher than users who visited once.

The official version adds a function that provides map checks and real-time available reservation time slots directly within answers. In the process of exploring restaurants or cafes, users can handle information checks, reservations and visits within a single flow. Naver also embedded a next-generation language model optimized for large-scale service environments to coincide with the official launch. The company said it improved query understanding and answer summarisation performance by combining existing HyperCLOVA X with Naver service scenarios and user feedback.

In the second half, it will introduce a personalised real estate listing recommendation function that reflects users’ budgets and preferred areas. It also plans to add a health agent that suggests personalised health management methods when users upload health check-up results. Within this year, it will also embed AI tab in the Whale Browser to expand the service across the web environment.

Kim Kwang-hyun (김광현), Naver’s chief data and content officer, said, "AI tab is a representative case that concentrates Naver’s unmatched service ecosystem and data infrastructure, and AI technological capabilities." He added, "Now that tens of millions of Naver users can use AI tab directly from the search bar, we will continue to expand a differentiated agent experience that connects exploration to execution."