South Korea’s biggest search engine Naver launches Clova, the personal assistant to rival Alexa.
Clova was first announced at this year’s Mobile World Congress and is now available for download on Google’s Play Store.
The AI-powered “cloud voice assistant” app was developed with its Japanese subsidiary Line, one of the world’s most popular messaging apps.
Clova will function much like other voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. It responds to user’s questions and presents information where needed. Naver says the app can translate languages and recommend music and food.
The app is presently only available in Korean, although Line says that it will eventually roll out Japanese and English versions too. While Line says it will eventually be made available on the Apple App Store too, it did not specify a timeline.
While it is only available as an app now, the company will launch a Clova-enabled device that will be known as Wave later in the year and rival the likes of Google Home and Amazon Echo. Wave will first arrive in Japan and Korea before moving to other countries.
