South Korea to Give All 52 Million Citizens Free AI Access

South Korea is launching a project unlike anything attempted by any G20 country: free, unlimited access to artificial intelligence for all 52 million citizens. On July 13, the Ministry of Science and ICT opened bidding for the "AI for Everyone" program, aiming to turn generative AI into a public service akin to infrastructure, rather than a commercial product sold by subscription.

What the Program Covers

The project has two components. The first is a general-purpose chatbot with no usage limits and no fees, available to every resident of the country. The second is a digital administrative assistant designed to help citizens find the benefits they're entitled to and fill out official applications on their own.

Two or three companies will be selected to build the system. The government will support them with hardware, up to 512 Nvidia B200 chips, but the chosen operators must also contribute their own funds for infrastructure matching the government's contribution. That's a significant scale for a single public program, given that B200 cards are among the most sought-after and scarce hardware for training and running large language models.

Domestic Models Come First

The bidding requirements strongly favor Korean technology. At least half of the system must run on homegrown foundation models that meet independent government standards. Companies using their own models must also source more than 30 percent of their components from other domestic AI vendors. Foreign models may only fill limited gaps and won't be eligible for government funding.

This is a direct response to the current balance of power in the Korean market, where foreign models have come to dominate citizens' use of AI. Bidding documents show that ChatGPT has 23.45 million users in the country, Gemini 8.45 million, and Claude 2.41 million, together far outpacing any Korean product. The government wants to reverse that ratio, treating dependence on foreign providers as a strategic problem rather than merely a business one.

Funding and Timeline

The program has guaranteed funding through 2030, though funding levels after 2027 will be subject to annual review and budget approval. The schedule is tight: company proposals are due by August 11, the beta version is set to enter testing in September, and full service rollout is planned before the end of 2026.

That pace of deployment sets the Korean project apart from other countries' approach, which tends to treat public AI mainly as pilot programs in select ministries or cities. South Korea is declaring from the outset its ambition to cover the entire population, making it the first G20 country to offer AI as a universal public service.

Impact on the Global AI Market

Seoul's decision fits into a broader trend of countries trying to reduce their dependence on American language model providers by investing in their own technology base and computing infrastructure. For companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, it signals the potential loss of market share in a country where they previously faced no domestic competitor backed by comparable government support.

For Polish readers, the program serves as a reference point in the debate over technological sovereignty. While South Korea is pledging state-funded AI access for its entire population, Polish initiatives such as the Bielik and PLLuM models remain in the research-tool development phase, without a comparable scale of deployment as a public service.

The key question is whether the Korean government can maintain service quality given the potentially huge number of users and the strict requirement favoring domestic models. Operators will be chosen after bidding closes on August 11, with the first real test coming when the beta version launches in September.