South Korea Picks Three Firms to Give Every Citizen Free AI

South Korea has chosen the companies that will build a national artificial intelligence service free to all 52 million of its residents. On 28 August the Ministry of Science and ICT selected three consortia, led by SK Telecom, KT and Kakao, to develop general-purpose chatbots and public-service agents that citizens can use without usage limits.

The programme, called AI for Everyone, would make the country the first G20 nation to offer AI to its entire population as a public service, according to The Next Web. Six applicants competed, and three advanced through an evaluation that weighed model quality, service design, user acquisition, safety and planned use of graphics chips, as Implicator.ai reported.

What citizens will get

Each consortium will run a basic chatbot alongside a public agent that can help people navigate government services, find assistance they qualify for and complete administrative paperwork. The core services are to be free with no token caps, though Seoul has left room for specialised or higher-performance features to carry a charge. The build rests on domestically hosted models and a pool of 512 Nvidia B200 accelerators, per TechNode.

The choice of home-grown models is deliberate. Officials have framed the effort partly as a way to reduce reliance on American systems and keep citizens' data and the underlying technology within national borders.

The timeline

The ministry plans to sign agreements in September, followed by beta testing and a full launch before the end of the year. SK Telecom has said its own beta could arrive as early as October, with reporting that KT intends to fold AI features into apps people already use rather than asking them to adopt something new.

South Korea is not alone in treating access to capable AI as public infrastructure. Thailand has promised free frontier access to millions of citizens, and Brazil has committed public money to sovereign models. What sets Seoul's plan apart is its scope. It aims to reach everyone, all at once.