Korea's path to state-run AI: a free public chatbot for everyone

South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT has unveiled “AI for All” (모두의 AI), a project that aims to turn access to generative AI into a free public service. After a call for proposals that ran from 13 July to 11 August 2026, the ministry selected three consortia led by SK Telecom, KT and Kakao to develop virtual assistants able to handle administrative procedures, bookings and payments. At the meeting in Seoul on 4 September 2026 where the plans and prototypes were presented, it was made clear that the services are not yet available to the public. On that occasion, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Bae Kyung-hoon said: “Our ultimate goal is for new Korean AI services to become a natural part of people's everyday lives.” The minister is also credited with describing the initiative as the “calculator and computer of the AI era”.

To support the domestic ecosystem and reduce reliance on foreign technology, the state has set precise requirements: at least 50% of the service must use models developed in Korea that meet the “sovereign foundation model” criteria, and at least 30% must rely on Korean models from companies other than the consortium's lead operator. On the infrastructure side, the government is providing the consortia with 512 NVIDIA B200 GPUs in total for 2026 to bring the launch forward, and expects the cost of the service to move onto the state budget from 2027. What is still unclear is how compliance with these percentages will be measured, and what penalties or consequences await consortia that fall short.

The three consortia are taking different approaches. SK Telecom is focusing on accessibility for people less comfortable with digital tools: it builds on its own A.X K2 model and offers services by text message or phone call, connected to the Government24 portal, covering 83 types of official certificates. Kakao plans to build the assistant directly into its KakaoTalk messaging app, while KT proposes a single conversational flow linked to its IPTV service. The testing timeline, however, varies across sources: the ministry's press release pointed to a beta at the end of September, the Korea Times says October, and JoongAng Economy News places it between late September and mid-October depending on the consortium. Asiae, for its part, reports a November beta and a December launch for Kakao. The official launch is still expected by the end of 2026. Long-term funding details and privacy safeguards also remain undefined; industry sources describe them as still in preparation.

Seoul's choice suggests that technological autonomy is seen as a pillar for building a “basic AI society”. It remains to be seen whether an architecture this fragmented, and bound by national quotas, can really compete with the efficiency of global models, or whether the complexity of running it will end up limiting its practical usefulness. — Olya