South Korea plans free national AI chatbot by 2031

Seoul tenders for “AI for everyone” service

South Korea’s government has kicked off an “AI for everyone” initiative, posting a tender for a universal basic AI chatbot and an AI agent for government services that must be free to use for all residents.

Under the plan, private providers will build and operate the systems under contracts that run until 2031. The state will back the project with up to 256 Nvidia B200 GPUs, and winning bidders will be required to match the government’s funding.

Free chatbot and agentic government interface

The policy goal is straightforward: every resident of South Korea should have access to a free, quality AI chatbot. Seoul has decided this is a tool “no local should be without.”

The same tender also mandates an agentic system that lets citizens interact with government services through an automated interface, effectively turning the platform into a front door for public-sector interactions.

Local models, local infrastructure

South Korea’s government wants the service to be locally hosted and operated, reducing dependence on overseas providers and ensuring systems reflect local culture.

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To that end, successful bidders must base their services on locally developed AI models, not foreign LLMs. Hosting will also be domestic, aligning with the broader push for sovereign AI capabilities.

Who’s likely to bid

Bidders have until August 11 to submit proposals. South Korean media reports suggest major local tech players are preparing to jump in, including Kakao, Naver, SK Telecom, and LG.

The field is strong:

• Kakao runs a dominant messaging platform often compared to WhatsApp.
• Naver is widely seen as a Google analogue in the Korean market.

Past policy choices have already tilted the table toward local firms. South Korea has restricted Google’s ability to run a mapping service on national security grounds, which helped Naver and Kakao build vastly superior local mapping apps and made their broader ecosystems more attractive.

Sovereign AI after the Anthropic fallout

The tender arrives just weeks after the US government compelled Anthropic to block all foreign nationals from accessing its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models.

Because Anthropic does not know which passports its US-based users hold, it could not comply with the order and instead took both models offline. That move, as reported, sparked heightened interest in sovereign AI capabilities — so that users in any given country are not suddenly cut off from key services due to policy shifts in another jurisdiction.

South Korean lawmakers are surely aware that funding free, local AI services strengthens those sovereign capabilities. They are also operating in a market where domestic tech giants already have the scale and infrastructure to take on the job.