韩国政府与SKT、Kakao、KT推进“AI for All”全民AI服务年内上线

The South Korean government and the three consortiums leading the "AI for All" project — SKT, Kakao (035720.KS) and KT — have begun development work in earnest to launch services within the year. The consortiums aim to lift monthly active users to 10 million per platform within a year of launch.
The Ministry of Science and ICT said it held a kickoff meeting for the AI for All project on the 4th at the Korea Press Center in central Seoul, where participants discussed public-private cooperation. The meeting was chaired by Bae Kyung-hoon, deputy prime minister and minister of science and ICT, and was attended by executives from consortium member companies including SKT, Kakao, KT, FuriosaAI, LG Uplus and Upstage.
At the meeting, each of the three consortiums screened prototype videos of their AI for All services and disclosed development plans.
The Kakao consortium will offer general-purpose chatbots and public-sector and specialized AI agents built on domestic AI models, including Kakao's Kanana and LG's Exaone, through channels already familiar to the public such as KakaoTalk and phone calls. The goal is to build an "AI for All platform" that completes everything from information searches to applications, reservations and payments in a single conversation. Kakao plans to gradually expand personalized AI agents and an open agent marketplace.
"We will expand the service beyond one agent per citizen to multiple agents per person," said Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a. "Starting with 5 million monthly active users immediately after the December launch this year, we aim to have 10 million by 2027 and 30 million by 2030 using Kakao's AI for All service."
The KT consortium, which introduced its service under the name "Ieum," will link a general-purpose AI agent based on real-time search with specialized AI services across more than 10 fields including public services, finance, education and shopping. KT also plans to consolidate the capabilities of the domestic AI ecosystem around Token Factory, an AI operating platform that integrates various domestic AI models with graphics processing unit (GPU) and neural processing unit (NPU) infrastructure and automatically routes queries to the optimal model. A KT official said the company would start with 5 million monthly active users right after launch and build a system capable of handling 20 million monthly active users next year.
The SKT consortium said it would provide action-oriented AI services that go beyond simple question-and-answer to carry out procedures on users' behalf, from authentication to applications and payments. SKT plans to introduce agent functions based on phone calls and text messages so that users who have difficulty with mobile apps and web environments can also use the service conveniently. Calling the AI service, for example, would let the AI help find a hospital or make a reservation over the phone. SKT has also set a monthly active user target of 10 million by the end of next year.
The consortiums plan to run beta services next month. "If we fail to create a clear point of differentiation from foreign AI, AI for All will fail," Bae said. "Let us pull together so that we can put out a service that makes citizens say 'wow' when it arrives."