South Korea to Provide Free Generative AI Access to All Citizens

South Korea intends to hand every one of its citizens free access to generative AI, in what amounts to the first attempt by a national government to treat model access as something close to a public service, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The tools will be wired into government systems, with the WSJ giving examples of potential use cases such as booking doctor's appointments, getting help finding an apartment or asking for tax advice. Small businesses will be able to work out their taxes and check whether they qualify for state support schemes, and parents will be sent suggested educational material for their children.

Seoul named three tech consortia on Friday to deliver the services, among them the country's two largest telecoms operators and the company behind Kakao, the messaging platform that functions as a general-purpose app across Korean life. Each will launch a dedicated app while folding the AI into products people already use. Usage will be uncapped, with no token limits.

The government will divide up to 512 of Nvidia's high-end B200 chips between the three groups and contribute toward running costs. The Ministry of Science and ICT has not said what the programme will cost. Beta testing starts in September, with a full rollout later this year.

Buying independence from U.S. and Chinese models

The goal is to steer South Korean citizens away from depending on systems built in the United States or China, something that other governments have aimed for from a different end.

The European Commission launched InvestAI in February 2025 to mobilise $232 billion (€200 billion) across the bloc, including $23 billion (€20 billion) earmarked for vast compute sites meant to cut European reliance on non-EU providers. India approved its IndiaAI Mission in March 2024 with about $1.25 billion, and has since put tens of thousands of subsidised GPUs within reach of startups and researchers while funding 20 homegrown model projects. Both aspire to build the machinery, where Seoul is handing citizens the finished product.

Some two-thirds of South Koreans have tried AI and roughly 23 million use generative tools regularly, but most sit on foreign free tiers: ChatGPT counted 23.45 million Korean users in April, against 8.45 million for Gemini and 2.41 million for Claude, according to figures in the ministry's tender documents. Only about 1.8 million people in the country pay for anything.

The rules are written to change that. Operators must route at least half of all queries through their own certified Korean foundation model and another 30% through models built by other Korean firms, putting the domestic floor at 80%. Foreign models are allowed only where the ministry considers them necessary, and that usage draws no subsidy. The government has set no target for uptake.

President Lee Jae Myung's administration has earmarked about $7.2 billion (10 trillion won) for AI spending in 2026, three times what it committed the previous year.