[Edaily Kim Hyun-ah Reporter Han Gwang-beom] Amid the competition for artificial intelligence (AI) supremacy between the United States and China, the government is fully launching the “AI for All” project as a core strategy to secure domestic AI sovereignty. The strategy aims to respond to the generative AI market, which is dominated by global Big Tech companies, by leading with AI agents that go beyond simple AI chatbots to directly perform public services such as issuing official documents and processing welfare applications.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon stated at a press conference marking his first anniversary in office on the 20th, “‘AI for All’ centers on prioritizing the integration of public agent services,” adding, “We will actively leverage the achievements of our proprietary AI foundation model to create services capable of competing with foreign AI.”

◇“AI Is Also Public Infrastructure”… Protecting 21 Million Free Users

The government’s “AI for All” initiative is a national AI platform designed to reduce reliance on paid AI services from foreign Big Tech companies.

Currently, there are approximately 23 million generative AI users in South Korea, but only about 2 million are paying subscribers. However, their use of tokens is limited. The government plans to focus primarily on the remaining approximately 21 million free users to build an environment where anyone can utilize high-performance AI without financial burden.

This initiative also aims to guarantee the public’s access to AI in anticipation of the possibility that foreign companies may raise fees or restrict usage in the future.

◇Beyond Chatbots to “Public Agents”… AI to Handle Public Complaints and Welfare

“AI for All” differs from existing chatbot-style generative AI, which merely answers questions.

The goal is to implement a “public Agent AI” that, in conjunction with the “Citizen Secretary” service led by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, will issue various certificates—such as resident registration transcripts—through the AI chatbot window, as well as handle public facility reservations, scholarship recommendations, and guidance on and applications for personalized welfare benefits.

The government will also adopt an open-platform structure. It plans to build an ecosystem that allows domestic AI companies to freely develop and integrate various agent services based on public data.

Furthermore, to prevent monopolization by a single company, the government will select two to three platforms rather than a single one and operate them under a competitive system. Companies that were not selected for independent AI foundation model projects—such as NAVER (035420), Kakao (035720), KTCorporation (030200), and LG Uplus (032640)—are also expected to participate in the form of consortia.

◇Support Extends from GPUs to Inference Costs… Synergy with ‘Dokpamo’

The government has also prepared phased support measures to ensure the market’s initial stabilization.

First, this year, a total of 512 GPUs will be provided free of charge to the three selected companies for platform development (256 for the top-ranked company, and 128 each for the second- and third-ranked companies). Starting next year, the government plans to expand the scope of support to include inference costs required for operating AI services and the costs of developing individual Agent AI agents.

Once the platforms secure users and establish their own revenue models, government support will be gradually phased out to encourage the development of self-sustaining, private-sector-led operations.

In particular, collaboration with the “Independent Foundation Model” (IFM) project—for which three companies are scheduled to be selected this August—is also key. Currently, LG Corp. (003550) AI Research Institute, Upstage, SKTelecom (017670), and Motif Technologies, all of which have passed the first round of testing, are competing, and three of them will be selected.

The government is pursuing a plan to maintain the proportion of domestically developed AI models used on the “AI for All” platform at 80% or higher. The vision is to build a virtuous-cycle ecosystem where the performance of domestic AI models improves as more citizens use the services.

Deputy Prime Minister Bae stated, “Starting with public services, we will expand AI services that citizens can tangibly experience to enhance the competitiveness of the domestic AI ecosystem.”