As a way to compete with current western-oriented AI devices, such as Apple’s Siri, Google’s Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa, LINE developed its own AI system called Clova in about a year and aims to bring Asia into the AI era – one country at a time.

Introduced at the “Barcelona Mobile World Congress” in February, the Clova technology exists in LINE’s new smart-home speakers, WAVE and the smaller CHAMP, as the company’s response to the growing technological advancements of the day.

Clova’s response mechanisms are tailored to process language in a more natural way, meaning that its responses are geared toward being more “human”.

The importance of its human-likeness factor is stressed in LINE chief technology officer Euivin Park’s way of referring to Clova.

“It’s not just machine learning. [Clova] is aimed to be a virtual assistant that is close to our daily lives. Machine learning is just a component of the virtual assistant,” she explained at the recent “LINE Developer’s Day” summit in Tokyo.

As of September, the Clova technology was only available in LINE’s WAVE and CHAMP smart speakers, which will go on sale to the general public outside of fall season presales, but only to those in Japan and South Korea.