Kakao upgrades Kanana-o AI to express emotions, accents via text prompts

Kakao, the operator of Korea’s dominant messaging app KakaoTalk and a major digital services ecosystem, has upgraded the voice generation technology in its proprietary omni artificial intelligence (AI) model, Kanana-o. The update allows users to fine-tune tone, speed, emotions and accents through simple natural-language instructions alone. According to a post on Kakao's tech blog published Tuesday, the improved model lets users shape how speech is delivered — not just what is read aloud — by giving instructions such as "read it very quickly," "read it in a low voice," "read it in a sad voice" or "read it in a Gyeongsang Province accent." The AI adjusts speed, volume, pitch, emotion, intonation and intensity accordingly. The model can also follow role-based instructions, such as reading "like a sports broadcast," "like a news anchor" or "like a storybook," and can combine multiple instructions at once — for example, "lower the tone and read it quickly in a sad voice." Kakao said that although the model was trained primarily on Korean-language data, it can follow the same kinds of