Users of Naver Papago, the South Korean online portal operator's artificial intelligence-powered translation service, have steadily increased, topping 20 million last month on overseas demand, industry sources said.

The number of Papago's monthly active users, both for app and web versions, reached 20.74 million in May, up 18 percent from a year ago, according to the sources, which cited a report by Naver Cloud Corp.

Papago's MAUs first surpassed the 20 million threshold in March and grew to 20.39 million in April.

Launched in 2016, Naver's AI multilingual translation service has shown constant growth in its user base over the years, with MAUs reaching 10 million in 2019, 13 million in 2021 and 18 million in 2023.

An increase in foreign users has contributed to Papago's growing popularity as international travel recovers following the easing of social distancing measures. (Yonhap)