How Kakao is shaping our behavior, and why we should care

Chyung Eun-ju

A month after Kakao’s latest update, some users are still frustrated, and the company’s next moves suggest the story is far from over. What was once a simple instant messaging app has started to look and behave more like a social network. The familiar "friends list" disappeared, replaced by photos, activity feeds and algorithmic updates. For an app once trusted as being neutral, private and purely functional, the change has felt unsettling.

KakaoTalk isn’t just another app in Korea; it’s part of the infrastructure of daily life. Nearly everyone — from children to grandparents — uses it to connect, pay, shop and work. When the app's interface changed, confusion wasn’t just about usability; it was about trust. People didn’t sign up for a social feed — they signed up to be connected.

The reason behind the redesign seems simple: time and money. Kakao’s user base is massive, but users spend less time in the app than they do on platforms like Instagram or TikTok. The new layout was meant to increase engagement and open more advertising space. In other words, it was designed to make users spend more time scrolling.

But Kakao’s ambitions don’t stop there. It has begun integrating artificial intelligence directly into KakaoTalk — including its own KanaNa model and OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Kakao. Users can now ask questions, receive AI-generated answers and even get daily “briefings” from an assistant that understands the context of their conversations. Kakao’s AI can draw on a web of connected services — maps, shopping, reservations, music — to deliver information instantly.

These developments are not happening in isolation. Kakao’s ecosystem already spans banking, payments, shopping, maps, reservations and music. With AI woven into the chat interface, it’s no longer just an instant messaging app — it’s becoming the infrastructure for daily life itself. As one Seoul-based tech analyst noted recently, “Kakao is no longer competing for market share — it’s competing for human attention.” That competition is increasingly shaped by algorithms trained to understand — and manipulate — what keeps us hooked.

It may seem convenient, but it also means that a single company could soon control nearly every digital action in our lives — from chats and payments to searches and choices. Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, warned that the danger isn’t AI out‑smarting us, but rather that it will exploit our weaknesses.

This isn’t just a design change. It’s a shift in social architecture — from a simple messaging tool to an attention economy, from private communication to behavioral data. By merging AI with social feeds, Kakao is tapping the same dopamine-driven logic that has already reshaped Western platforms.

Joel Cho

The human brain — especially its reward center, the nucleus accumbens — craves novelty, status and validation. Tech companies know exactly how to exploit that craving. Every red-badge notification, endless scroll and personalized feed is designed to hit the brain’s neural slot machine. Now, with AI predicting our needs before we even express them, the machine is learning to anticipate our dopamine spikes faster than we can resist.

Kakao’s move reflects a global trend: platforms don’t just compete for attention anymore — they shape it. When a single app dominates messaging, banking and AI-driven search, the stakes aren’t just user experience. They’re about sovereignty: who controls our data, our focus and ultimately, our behavior.

Kyobo Securities analyst Kim Dong-woo expects Kakao’s advertising revenue to grow nearly 18.6 percent by 2026, fueled by GPT subscription services and AI-driven search advertising within KakaoTalk. Investors cheered — but users did not. Because what’s profitable for platforms often comes at the expense of peace, privacy and genuine human connection.

Kakao once became beloved precisely because it was not like other platforms. It was clean, efficient and noninvasive — a quiet corner of the digital world. In trying to imitate Instagram or TikTok, it risks losing what made it trustworthy in the first place.

This isn’t just about Kakao. It’s about the future of our relationship with technology — whether we design it to serve our needs, or let it train our brains to serve its metrics. The more we let AI personalize our world, the more we risk becoming predictable within it.

Not every product needs to maximize engagement. Not every app needs to be a feed. And not every company needs to hold a monopoly on our attention. The next stage of innovation shouldn’t be about capturing more of our time — it should be about giving it back.

Chyung Eun-ju (ejchyung@snu.ac.kr) is a tech research associate at Donghyun ASP. She earned both her bachelor's in business and master's in marketing from Seoul National University. Joel Cho (joelywcho@gmail.com) is a practicing lawyer specializing in IP and digital law.