South Korea intends to provide every one of its citizens with free access to generative AI, marking what is being described as the first attempt by a national government to treat AI model access as something close to a public service. According to a Wall Street Journal report, South Korea plans to provide all citizens with free access to generative AI through government systems, allowing for various services like booking appointments, finding apartments, and tax advice.
The programme, named AI for All, will be delivered through three technology consortia selected by the government, 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 of the three groups will launch a dedicated app while also integrating AI capabilities into products people already use on a daily basis. Usage will be uncapped, with no token limits, and the services will be supported by Nvidia’s high-end B200 chips. The government will divide up to 512 of Nvidia’s B200 chips between the three groups and contribute toward running costs, though the Ministry of Science and ICT has not disclosed the total cost of the programme. Beta testing for the programme is set to begin in September, followed by a broader rollout later in the year.
The initiative forms part of a broader strategy aimed at reducing South Korea’s dependence on AI systems developed in the United States and China, while encouraging wider adoption of domestically built models. Operators participating in the programme are required to route at least half of all queries through their own certified Korean foundation models, with another 30 percent required to run through models built by other Korean companies, creating an 80 percent minimum share for domestic AI systems. Foreign models may only be used when the ministry considers it necessary, and foreign model usage will not receive any government subsidy. According to figures cited from the ministry’s own tender documents, roughly two-thirds of South Koreans have tried AI and around 23 million use generative tools regularly, though most currently rely on foreign free tiers, with ChatGPT reporting 23.45 million Korean users in April compared with 8.45 million for Gemini and 2.41 million for Claude.
The scale of investment behind the programme reflects a broader increase in government spending on artificial intelligence in South Korea. The administration of President Lee Jae-myung has allocated approximately 10 trillion won, or 7.2 billion dollars, for AI related expenses in 2026, three times the amount set aside the previous year. Officials have also pointed to relatively low current paid adoption of AI services in the country as a motivation for the free rollout, with only about 1.8 million people in South Korea currently paying for an AI service, even though roughly a quarter of South Koreans already pay for generative AI compared with about 2 percent of Americans, according to separate survey data. By positioning generative AI as a public utility rather than a paid product, South Korea is taking one of the more direct approaches among major economies toward embedding AI into everyday government and consumer services, distinguishing its strategy from efforts elsewhere that have focused primarily on building underlying compute infrastructure rather than distributing finished AI access directly to citizens.
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