"Plan a bakery-hopping route in Seongsu"—NAVER Map AI finds places and even makes reservations

[Financial News] NAVER has applied an artificial intelligence (AI) agent to NAVER Map, allowing users to handle everything from searching for places to making reservations in one go. When users enter a request such as "Recommend a bakery-hopping route in Seongsu-dong," the AI finds suitable places and narrows the search through follow-up conversations.
NAVER unveiled Place Agent, a conversational place-search solution that allows users to receive recommendations and make reservations through conversations in the map app, on the 17th.
Place Agent is an AI-powered conversational search feature specialized in finding places. Based on the user's conversational context and location information, it recommends places that match the user's criteria from those registered on NAVER Map, including restaurants, cafes, bakeries, hotels, pensions, hair salons and veterinary hospitals.
It also understands sentence-based searches containing multiple conditions. For example, users can enter requests such as "A quiet cafe in Yeonnam-dong where I can read a book alone on a rainy day" or "A good tofu restaurant in Ui-dong to visit after hiking among the autumn foliage on Bukhansan," and receive a list of places reflecting the location, situation and purpose specified. Users can also receive recommendations based only on a situation or purpose, without specifying a particular area, such as "A place suitable for a date" or "A place with convenient parking."
Recommendations draw not only on place information held by NAVER, such as addresses, business hours, menus and phone numbers, but also on visitor reviews, blog reviews and reservation availability. Based on this information, the AI also explains each place's features and why it recommends it.
The service supports multi-turn conversations, allowing users to narrow down the results by asking additional questions. It carries over the context of the preceding conversation and filters the options again according to the user's criteria.
For places that support NAVER Booking, users can proceed directly from a search to a reservation. If a user enters a request such as "Make a reservation for four people at noon tomorrow at [business name]," the agent organizes the reservation details, including the date, time and number of people, and asks the user to confirm them. Once the user agrees, it submits the reservation request.
Place Agent can be accessed by pressing the agent button on the right side of the search bar in the NAVER Map app. Users can also access it through recommended questions displayed in restaurant search results or the "Ask the AI agent" button that appears when there are no suitable search results. The service is available to logged-in users aged 14 and older, and responses include an AI disclosure notice.
Choi Ji-hoon, NAVER's head of Place Search, said, "We will continue to enhance the features and usability so that users can discover the places they want more easily and accurately, and naturally proceed to reservations and actual visits."
[email protected] Choi Hye-rim Reporter