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This Time, Readers Get to Choose the Story
Have you ever wondered while reading a webtoon, “What would I say if I were there in that scene?” Or “What would happen if the two main characters met somewhere the original never showed?” In fandoms, these questions have long led to fan art, fan fiction, and short roleplays. But there was rarely a way to step directly into the official universe.
Naver Webtoon’s AI story chat ‘ByUs’ (바이어스), launched on July 1st, is a service designed to close that gap. It lets users become the protagonist of an original webtoon, talk with characters, and shape new stories through their choices. The key is that it goes beyond a simple chatbot asking about the character’s day; it’s built so the reader actively participates in the story’s progression.
The name itself is interesting. ‘ByUs’ suggests “made together with us.” A webtoon is the creator’s work, but as a series grows longer, it often becomes a world nurtured by fans through comments, memes, and secondary creations. ByUs aims to bring that energy of fan activity into the service itself. Of course, the most important question remains: how far can fans create new stories while respecting the original?
‘Creator Approval’ Is the Starting Point for This Service
The biggest feature ByUs touts is creator approval. Naver Webtoon has stated that it will only use official intellectual property (IP) that the author has permitted for the service. IP here means not just a character’s name and appearance, but the entire creative asset fans love: the world’s lore, relationships, and settings. This puts it on a different starting line from services that use famous characters for AI chats without the original creator’s consent.
This distinction is more important than you might think. As generative AI becomes widespread, fans have grown accustomed to chatting with their favorite characters or creating new scenes. But there have been ongoing concerns about the possibility of unwanted relationship settings, explicit content, or conversations that change the work’s nature. The moment a character gets closer to a fan, the risk of blurring the author’s rights and the work’s context also grows.
ByUs starts with works approved by the creator to reduce that risk. The first IP is the webtoon ‘Leaving for a New Job’ (이직로그). Users will experience stories based on the existing world and character settings. The original creator, Woo Si-mok (우시목), has also expressed hope that with creator approval, fans can become the protagonist and create various stories. It’s a structure where fans get an officially open playground, and the creator retains the right to choose how their work expands.
How Is Original Story Different from Fan Story?
ByUs offers two main paths. First, ‘Original Story’ starts with the original work’s world and character settings. After a prepared intro, users chat with characters and shape the narrative through their own choices. It’s closer to taking on the role of the protagonist from a starting point set by the creator and platform, rather than the reader completely rewriting the work.
‘Fan Story’ offers a bit more freedom. Users can create new stories by setting up different situations or relationships based on the original characters. The service also provides UGC (User Generated Content) tools so users can produce their own stories and share them with others. UGC stands for User Generated Content, meaning content created by users, not just the company or the author. For readers familiar with reading and writing fan fiction, this will likely be the most eye-catching feature.
However, it’s worth clearing up a common misconception here. Just because it’s called an AI story chat doesn’t mean the AI freely rewrites the entire original work. ByUs is a conversational experience based on approved IP, and the choices users input operate within the service’s settings and operational guidelines. As the freedom of fan creation expands, respect for the original characters and the platform’s management become even more crucial.
From Suggested Replies to Special Cuts, Keeping the Conversation Flowing
For a service where you talk to characters, things often get harder after a few exchanges rather than after sending that first message. If you get stuck on what to say or the story starts spinning its wheels, immersion quickly breaks. ByUs has considered this point and included ‘Suggested Replies’ and ‘Auto Play’ features. Suggested replies show the next direction for the conversation through options, while Auto Play keeps the story going so the flow isn’t interrupted.
‘Snapshots’ and ‘Special Cuts’ are also familiar and welcome features for webtoon fans. Snapshots provide images tailored to the situation, helping you imagine the conversation scene more vividly. Special Cuts are images that are sequentially unlocked like rewards, based on your affinity level with the character. If the structure is about continuing conversations to get a hidden expression of your favorite character or a new scene, it can feel like a meeting of a game’s intimacy system and a webtoon’s viewing experience.
These features shouldn’t be seen merely as tools to increase dwell time. Webtoons are inherently a format where readers wait for the next episode, share emotions in the comments, and mull over a character’s choices for a long time. ByUs inserts conversation and choice into that period of waiting. A reader who enjoys one episode a week might find themselves visiting the character’s world every day. It makes you wonder how the daily rhythm of fandom might change.
How Far Can Webtoons Go Beyond Being ‘Read’ Content?
Naver Webtoon plans to gradually expand ByUs’s IP lineup, focusing on works with strong fandoms. The platform has been running ‘Character Chat’ since 2024, which allows for everyday chats or roleplay with characters. ByUs takes it a step further, placing more weight on the experience of creating a story together rather than just the conversation itself. It’s not just about becoming a friend to your favorite character; it’s about becoming the chooser in a specific scene.
Services that let you talk to your favorite characters aren’t unfamiliar in international fandoms either. Services like Character.AI have already offered similar experiences, and interactive storytelling based on web novels and webtoons has been attempted on various platforms. However, a case like ByUs—which takes the official universe of a published series and turns it into a service, predicated on the explicit approval of the original creator—is still rare. This can be read as a sign that K-webtoon is experimenting with a secondary creation ecosystem for global fandom at the platform level.
Of course, as the service grows, there’s much to watch. It will be important to see which creators choose to participate, how the sharing scope and management standards for fan stories are set, and how convincingly the AI maintains the characters’ voices and the world’s lore. We also need to keep an eye on whether creators receive fair compensation and control. It’s still an open question whether fan participation will become a virtuous cycle that boosts consumption of the original work, or if it will become a substitute for it.
Still, ByUs is a case of translating what K-webtoon fandoms have already been doing into the language of an official service. It will be especially interesting for readers who wait for their favorite character’s next line, or who have been adding their own imagination to the gaps in the original story. The next time you read ‘Leaving for a New Job,’ remember that you might now be able to continue the story left outside the panels yourself. It’s time to start seeing how that choice will change the way you experience a webtoon.
Source: Naver Webtoon press release, July 1, 2026.
