Plain bagel, the operator of ‘Picka’, launched an AI tarot service ‘Tarot Market’

Provides an experience of real-time conversation with AI characters through chat-type tarot

Plain bagel, which operates the chat-type interactive platform ‘Picka’, has launched ‘Tarot Market’, a tarot service that utilizes generative AI.

https://seenthis.kr/newspage/2377⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

While existing tarot services have provided rule-based tarot chatbots that offer standardized answers, Picka’s Tarot Market has planned a tarot master based on generative AI to provide users with an experience of real-time conversation with the tarot master.

In addition, Tarot Market is characterized by using six characters from Picka's original IP ‘Weekly Boyfriend’ as tarot masters, instead of a single character. Picka is expanding the scope of its content use by utilizing generative AI technology with original IP, and is building its own content domain.

Tarot Market consists of three themes: fortune teller, love advisor, and worry solver. There are two tarot masters for each theme. Users can select one of the two masters with opposite personalities by viewing keywords that include information about the master’s personality and speech. Based on these features, Tarot Market secures a sense of camaraderie between the character and the user, receives the user’s worries in a more natural conversational context, and provides personalized solutions. The tarot masters are being revealed sequentially for each market, and by utilizing characters from the Picka story ‘Weekly Boyfriend’, they are evoking a sense of familiarity for existing users and curiosity for new users.

Tarot Market uses tarot, a personal and intimate subject, as a topic of conversation, but since it is a conversation with AI, not a real person, it provides a safe space for users to honestly share their worries and relieve their concerns. This configuration is possible thanks to Plain Bagel’s unique AI creation tool called ‘Scripter Builder’.

Scripter Builder is a tool composed of two types of dialogue generation blocks: ‘AI Block’ and ‘General Block’. AI Block provides functions such as free conversation, conversation analysis, external information utilization (RAG), and actor persona tuning using generative AI. Through this function, you can analyze conversations to determine the branching of content narratives, or modify various AI functions such as tarot interpretation, problem solving, one-time personalized answers, or contextual free conversations.

General Block, on the other hand, provides functions that allow for fixed character utterances, choices, UI actions, and exception handling. Creators can use both ‘generative’ and ‘fixed’ script blocks freely to create content. This is a unique technology of the Plain Bagel AI team that complements the shortcomings of existing generative AI while securing playability.

Tarot Market has seen about 2,000 tarot consultations in just one week since its official launch. Notably, the proportion of love consultations was 50%, which was significantly higher than decision (27%) and luck (23%). Users who have tried Tarot Market have left reviews such as, “I was surprised that it was more accurate than I thought and felt natural like a conversation with a real person”, and “It helped me solve my worries by giving me only the necessary words with logical reasoning”. This shows that the tarot market service implemented with generative AI is just as natural as having a conversation with a real person when getting a tarot reading, and is fulfilling the worries and curiosities of users who want to solve problems through tarot.

Hae-Rin Kim, PM of Plain Bagel’s AI Team, said, “Tarot Market is not a service that simply provides tarot card interpretations mechanically to users, but a service where users can share their worries with AI and receive personalized advice and counseling while being comforted”. She added, “The goal of Tarot Market is to make it fun through the natural conversational experience itself and to experience the sophisticated tarot interpretation function, encouraging users to play at least daily, and preferably more often”. She also added, “In the future, we plan to actively utilize our IP to build our own generative AI content domain”.

Ji-Hoon Kang, lead developer of Plain Bagel’s AI team, said, “The Scripter Builder created to provide Tarot Market is the first step in enhancing the quality of AI content experience by naturally reflecting the context of conversation”. He added, “We aim to create a conversational AI game and content production environment unlike any seen before by adding various AI creation assistants and continuously improving AI block functionality”. He further stated, “Ultimately, we aim to make these creative tools available to general users so that anyone can easily create personalized content using AI”.

Picka is currently operating English and Japanese apps targeting the North American and Southeast Asian markets, and the Japanese market, respectively, and has already reached 800,000 monthly active users for its global version app. Picka plans to release English and Japanese versions of ‘Tarot Market’ as soon as possible, taking advantage of its unique localization planning process and generative AI utilization.

Meanwhile, ‘Weekly Boyfriend’, which is the foundation of the tarot masters, is Picka’s representative original IP, which is a chatbot survival content in which only 7 out of 49 boyfriends survive through user voting. Through real-time voting services, characters receive votes from users for a certain period of time, and only characters with more votes are confirmed as characters for the next round. It is considered a story that has maximized immersion and formed a fandom through active interaction.

Plain Bagel is an AI-based content platform startup founded in August 2016. The company launched ‘Picka’, a content platform that applies simulation game elements to a messenger-type UI, in 2019. Within three years of its launch, it has steadily expanded its services, gaining a foothold in global markets such as the US and Japan, and has recorded a total of 5.2 million users as of 2024.

Website: http://www.pbagel.com

Contact
Plain Bagel
Marketing Team
Manager Ji-Eun Jeong