韩国内容厂商借AI聊天/粉丝社区锁定粉丝，但报道仅为行业趋势综述、无公司级新增事实

Korean Content Firms Race to Lock In Fans With AI Chat Services - Seoul Economic Daily
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A screen from the fan platform "Berriz." Photo courtesy of Kakao Entertainment
South Korean content companies are rolling out a wave of fan community services across music, webtoons and streaming, aiming to tighten fan loyalty while channeling that engagement into merchandise sales and repeat consumption of original works. The services let users communicate directly through the works or artists they follow and experience content in new ways.
Fan community services that draw user participation around intellectual property are spreading quickly, according to information technology industry officials on the 9th.
Kakao Entertainment operates the fan platform Berriz. Alongside community features that let fans exchange views on K-pop artists and content IP, the company runs Berriz Shop, which sells merchandise tied to SM Entertainment and the Samsung Lions baseball club, among others.
Within a year of its official launch in March last year, the platform had drawn users from 202 countries, with overseas users accounting for roughly 80% of its total user base. It recently added a Melon account linking feature, expanding its reach as a communication platform for global K-pop fans.
Features built on artificial intelligence are also being used to draw fan participation. Examples include AI Comment Report, which analyzes reactions in comment sections, and AI Persona, which lets users converse directly with characters from a drama series after the AI has been trained on the script.
A screen from Naver Webtoon's "Vias" service. Photo courtesy of Naver Webtoon
Naver Webtoon operates Byers, an AI chatbot service built on its own webtoon IP. Since its formal launch at the end of June this year, cumulative conversations have surpassed 14 million. Byers lets users talk directly with characters from a work, based on fictional universes that have been approved and reviewed by the original creators.
Such services are also lengthening the period over which content is consumed and pulling users back to the source material. "Jijikrog," a Naver Webtoon series currently on hiatus, saw views of the original work rise 67% after Byers was introduced, while new user inflows climbed 105%. Even while the series was not being serialized, the characters and fictional world kept fans in contact with the IP.
A screen from Tving's "Fan Talk" service. Photo courtesy of Tving
Similar moves are under way among online video streaming services. Last month, Tving launched Fan Talk, a community feature that lets users communicate in real time around its content. Dedicated chat rooms for each title allow viewers to watch together and share reactions to stage performances, cheer on cast members and post episode-by-episode reviews as they go.
AI Pet Bubble, jointly developed by Eyes Entertainment and Dear U, recreates the pets that artists actually keep as AI characters, letting fans chat and interact with them.
The content industry is focusing on fan communities because they do more than extend time spent on a platform — they maintain a continuous point of contact between IP and fans. Consumption that once ended with watching a show or listening to a song can be stretched into conversations with characters, real-time interaction and merchandise purchases, extending the life of the original work and creating new revenue streams.
Generative AI, in particular, is turning content consumption from a largely one-way experience into a two-way one. Users can now engage more deeply with a work, whether by talking directly with its characters or interacting with AI characters tied to an artist.
"Services that use new technologies such as AI to deepen user engagement with content are steadily increasing," an industry official said. "As the points of contact between fans and IP widen, customer lock-in grows stronger and spills over into adjacent markets such as merchandise, which is expected to broaden the content market as a whole."
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Original reporting by
Lee Jin-seok
for Seoul Economic Daily.
AI-translated from Korean. Quotes from foreign sources are based on Korean-language reports and may not reflect exact original wording.
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