South Korea plans to hand every citizen free AI access, with no token limits under a program called "AI for All." No national government has treated advanced AI model access as a public service before.

South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT named three consortia to run the program. They include the country's two biggest telecom operators, along with the company behind Kakao, the app that functions as a general-purpose tool across Korean life.

Each will build its own dedicated app and fold the AI into products people already use.

The state is supplying the chips. Up to 512 Nvidia B200s, split three ways, with the government also covering part of the running costs. What it all adds up to isn't clear, since the Ministry of Science and ICT hasn't attached a number to it. A beta opens in September, with the full rollout later this year.

The AI will plug directly into government systems, letting users book doctors' appointments, look for apartments, and get tax advice. Small businesses, meanwhile, could use it to calculate their taxes and check whether they qualify for state support. Parents, too, can benefit from the program by receiving suggested learning material for their kids.

Right now, foreign AI models run the show. Two-thirds of South Koreans have already tried AI. Ministry tender documents show ChatGPT with 23.45 million Korean users in April, Gemini with 8.45 million, and Claude with 2.41 million. Only around 1.8 million people in the country pay for any of it.

The new quotas, the requirement that most traffic must run on local technology, are designed to change that. Half of every operator's queries have to run through its own certified Korean foundation model, and another 30% through models built by other Korean firms. Eighty percent domestic, in other words.

Foreign models are allowed where the ministry decides they're needed, but without subsidy.

Nobody else has approached AI this way. Brussels set up InvestAI in February 2025 to mobilize €200 billion across the bloc, with €20 billion aimed at compute sites. New Delhi approved its IndiaAI back in March 2024 for roughly $1.25 billion, putting cheap GPUs in front of startups and funding 20 homegrown models.

Both of these have to do with building machinery. Seoul, meanwhile, is handing out the finished product to its citizens.

President Lee Jae-myung's administration has budgeted 10 trillion won for AI in 2026, three times what it spent last year to underwrite the free service.

Source: Ministry of Science and ICT, Yonhap News, European Commission, PMIndia, Decrypt

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