Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
WRTN launches 'secure' KakaoTalk-based DeepSeek AI service
This captured image shows WRTN's artificial intelligence service powered by DeepSeek's R1 model on KakaoTalk. When the user makes an inquiry, it shows how the model reached an answer. Captured from WRTN's KakaoTalk channel
By Nam Hyun-woo
Korean artificial intelligence (AI) startup WRTN said Tuesday it launched an AI agent service, powered by DeepSeek’s R1 model, on Korea’s top mobile messenger, KakaoTalk.
According to WRTN, users can get DeepSeek’s chat-based AI assistant by adding WRTN’s channel on KakaoTalk. This is the first time that DeepSeek’s AI service is available and secured on a separate cloud storage in Korea.
Released last month, DeepSeek's R1 model created a major splash in the global tech world by demonstrating performance on par with or exceeding OpenAI's existing models, such as ChatGPT, while requiring less computing power.
Despite the keen attention it garnered, its download and public use are restricted in some countries due to concerns over personal data security, unauthorized data collection and potential use of collected data in model training.
WRTN said it addressed such concerns by operating the model directly on a separate cloud infrastructure rather than using DeepSeek's original service.
“The secure DeepSeek service provided by WRTN runs on a cloud environment that is physically separated from the model developer,” a WRTN official said. “This ensures that user input data is not shared to specific countries and is not used for model training by the developer.”
WRTN’s DeepSeek service is available for free and unlimited use on the company’s channel on KakaoTalk. Users can get AI assistance by engaging in conversations in the chat. WRTN said it plans to offer the DeepSeek model via its KakaoTalk channel first and determine whether to expand the service to its own agent after analyzing its performance and user feedback.
“As a company seeking AI popularization, we have been providing high-performance AI models worldwide for free and without limits,” WRTN CEO Lee Se-young said. “In the intensifying competition among new AI models, we will ensure that everyone can enjoy AI in the fastest, most convenient and safest way possible.”