en.Wedoany.com Reported - South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT plans to launch a free AI chatbot service called 'AI for All' within this year, based on the domestically developed 'National AI Foundation Model,' with a project announcement expected as early as this month. This service, as a practical commercialization follow-up project related to the National AI Foundation Model initiative, aims to provide high-quality AI assistants tailored to the Korean language and culture for all citizens.
According to industry sources on the 4th, the Ministry is in the final review stage for the announcement of the 'AI for All' project. Similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, 'AI for All' will be built on the National AI Foundation Model, which is led, supported, and developed by the Ministry. In providing the service, the Ministry also plans to offer specialized models for the elderly and vulnerable groups, and will allocate government funding until 2028 to ensure free and continuous use for all citizens. After that, operational costs will be considered through joint investments with partner companies.
The types of models used for the 'AI for All' service are expected to be determined around August this year, following the second-phase evaluation of the National AI Foundation Model. Since last year, the Ministry has been advancing independent technological upgrades in major AI model areas such as large language models and multimodal models through the competitive compression-based National AI Foundation Model project. Teams that passed the first-phase evaluation earlier this year include LG AI Research, SK Telecom, and Upstage's elite team, as well as Motif Technologies' elite team, which joined after a vacancy caused by a controversy over technological independence led to a re-announcement. After the second-phase evaluation in August and the announcement of third-phase results at the end of the year, only two teams will remain.
The Ministry previously announced plans to fully open-source the National AI Foundation Model in August, when the second-phase evaluation takes place. LG AI Research, SK Telecom, and Upstage have already uploaded their respective models—'K-Exaone,' 'A.X K1,' and 'Solar Open 100B'—to Hugging Face, the world's largest open-source platform. Motif Technologies, which joined through the additional recruitment, plans to open-source a 300-billion-parameter-level reasoning large language model during the second-phase evaluation. Given that the National AI Foundation Model project aims to disseminate government-supported AI models for development and upgrades, it is a natural step for existing elite teams to participate in the 'AI for All' project. It is reported that most companies among LG AI Research, SK Telecom, Upstage, and Motif Technologies are considering participation.
The Ministry stated that eligibility to apply for the 'AI for All' project is not limited to the National AI Foundation Model elite teams; any company utilizing the National AI Foundation Model can participate. This means that startups or small and medium-sized enterprises without their own foundation models can also build services using the open-source National AI Foundation Model and join the project. A Ministry official noted that since the National AI Foundation Model has been made publicly available through open-source and application programming interfaces, the project is not restricted to the elite teams alone.
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