"Corporations without their own artificial intelligence (AI) models can participate in the Everyone's AI program if they use models from other domestic corporations that meet government standards for 50% or more."
Gong Jin-ho, director of artificial intelligence policy planning at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said this at the Everyone's AI program briefing held on the 21st at Front One in Mapo District, Seoul. The government has left the door open for platform and service corporations that do not have their own foundation models to participate in the program.
Everyone's AI is a program that provides a general-purpose chatbot and public AI agents to the entire population based on domestic AI models. The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to select two to three corporations in Aug., conduct a beta service in Sep., and launch the official service in Dec. Program operators must use domestic AI models that meet the independent foundation model criteria for 50% or more of total usage. To diversify Korea's AI ecosystem, they must also use other corporations' domestic models for 30% or more.
Director Gong said, "The condition of using 50% domestic models and 30% other domestic models does not in any way mean that foreign models can be used for up to 20%," adding, "If foreign models are used excessively beyond the bare minimum necessary, it will be reflected in the evaluation."
Corporations that failed in the previous DOCPAMO project are not excluded. The government said that if they prove the model's independence through approaches such as the "from scratch" method, which performs pretraining from the beginning, they can be recognized as independent models in the Everyone's AI program. In contrast, foreign models are only allowed on a limited basis for functions that are difficult to implement with domestic models alone, such as high-difficulty reasoning or multimodal capabilities.
◇ Basic AI services free, advanced features paid
Director Gong cited the risk of dependence on foreign AI services as the background for promoting Everyone's AI. Gong said, "If the entire population keeps using foreign AI and access is suddenly restricted all at once, the economic and social damage will inevitably be great," adding, "We also need to prepare for the possibility that the current subscription fee of 20,000–30,000 won may rise sharply in the future."
He went on to say, "The entire population should learn AI like Hangul and arithmetic, and use it as easily and without burden as a calculator," adding, "We will launch a general-purpose chatbot and public AI services within the year and upgrade to 'one AI agent per person' after 2027."
The principle is to provide the basic functions of the general-purpose AI chatbot and public AI agent supported by the government without usage fees or usage limits. The public AI agent will first find and inform users of welfare and administrative services they can receive, and support eligibility checks and applications. However, corporations are not required to open all specialized services or high-performance features for free. Corporations can offer functions beyond the basic service for a fee or establish their own revenue models by linking with existing platforms and services.
Lee Jong-geun, assistant director in the artificial intelligence policy planning division at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, "If there is demand for advanced features beyond the basic functions and corporations have strategies to secure paying users, we believe paid service operations should be allowed," adding, "Each corporation has different touchpoints with consumers and different platform operating methods, so business models can also vary. A certain level of revenue must be generated within a scope that does not undermine public interest for a self-sustaining ecosystem to emerge."
◇ Support of 512 B200s… corporations also required to co-fund
The government will allocate up to 512 Nvidia B200 graphics processing units (GPUs) purchased this year to program operators. Director Gong explained, "If two companies are selected, each will receive 256 units, and if three are chosen, the first-ranked will receive 256 units and the second and third will each receive 128 units." The converted unit price of one B200 is 6.6 million won per month. The government subsidy will be calculated as the GPU converted amount for the four months from Sep. to Dec., the agreement period for this year.
Corporations must contribute matching funds in line with the government subsidy. If a consortium includes even one large corporation, the large-corporation standard applies. Director Gong said, "The minimum matching ratios are 10% for large corporations, 6% for mid-sized corporations, and 5% for small corporations. The minimum cash portion of the matching amount is 15% for large corporations, 13% for mid-sized corporations, and 10% for small corporations," adding, "In the presentation evaluation, the corporation with the largest matching amount by corporation size will receive an additional 3 points, while the second and third will receive 2 points and 1 point, respectively."
It will be difficult to receive a good evaluation for simply swapping in a domestic AI model into an existing service. A separate Everyone's AI service should be built, but linking with existing platforms or commercial services is allowed. The government plans to assess performance based on actual user response and the number of users rather than technical benchmarks. Corporations that fail to secure users may be excluded from support or replaced by another operator through an annual evaluation (a procedure that comprehensively evaluates work performance and capabilities over the past year).
Assistant Director Lee said, "It is not desirable to continue supporting a service that is not performing well just because it was selected once for a government program," adding, "If the number of users is significantly low, we must consider selecting new corporations through the annual evaluation."
The Ministry of Science and ICT expects about 10 corporations to participate in this call. At the briefing that day, officials from platform and AI corporations, including LG Uplus and Kakao, as well as Liner, Rebellions, ESTsoft, Skelter Labs, and Saltlux, attended.