Karlo (by Kakao Brain)

Karlo is a high-performance generative AI model developed by Kakao Brain, the AI research arm of Kakao. Built on latent diffusion architecture and trained on a dataset of over 600 million image-text pairs, Karlo 2.1 represents a significant leap in semantic understanding and visual fidelity as of 2026. Unlike many Western-centric models, Karlo offers a distinct competitive edge in its nuanced understanding of East Asian aesthetics and cultural contexts, while maintaining global competitive standards for general image synthesis. The architecture leverages model distillation techniques to optimize inference speeds without compromising on detail, making it particularly suitable for high-volume enterprise environments. Positioned as a versatile alternative to DALL-E and Midjourney, Karlo integrates deeply into the Kakao Developers ecosystem, offering robust API endpoints for text-to-image, image-to-image, and sophisticated inpainting/outpainting tasks. In the 2026 market, Karlo is recognized for its cost-effective scaling and localized linguistic precision, particularly in Korean and English, providing a critical tool for global brands targeting diverse demographics.