Naver Webtoon’s AI ‘Character Chat’ Surpasses 100 Million Messages, Driven by Gen Z and Millennials

Naver Webtoon’s experimental AI-powered chat service “Character Chat” has surpassed 100 million accumulated messages within just one year of its launch, the company announced on June 23.

Originally introduced in June 2024, Character Chat simulates conversations with popular webtoon characters by analyzing their personalities, speech patterns, and narrative backgrounds. The platform has attracted approximately 3.5 million unique users to date.

The service, which launched with four characters, has expanded to include twelve, continuously refining its features with additions like role-playing modes and dialogue models that adapt based on user affinity. One of the most popular additions, “Terteo” from the series ‘My Stepfamily Is Obsessed With Me‘, introduced in April, dynamically adjusts its tone and the way it addresses users based on their level of intimacy

Demographic data shows strong traction among younger audiences, with 76% of users in their teens and twenties. Teenagers alone account for 47.6% of the user base. As engagement deepens, users are increasingly opting for paid messages once their free quota is exhausted. As of May, paid messages represented 41% of total message traffic, with per-user spending nearly doubling compared to the service’s first week.

Character Chat also appears to boost readership of the original webtoons. For instance, after the chatbot version of Seol Hyorim from ‘*23#(Star Three Shop)‘ was introduced, views of the original comic surged by 97% in the following week. The number of unique readers rose by 29%, paying users by 22%, and revenue by 44%.

Hyojung Kim, Chief Product Officer at Naver Webtoon, commented, “Character Chat is shaping up to be a new frontier in digital goods within the webtoon platform. We are currently exploring integrations with voice and visual AI technologies to further enhance user experiences, alongside plans for global expansion.”

The original Korean version of this article is available on Naver’s official newsroom.