South Korea just decided AI should be free, like a public utility. But there's a catch.

Here's the full story, via South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT).

MSIT "plans to launch a general-purpose AI chatbot service for all citizens within this year, free of charge and without usage limits." Alongside it, the government "will provide a public AI agent that proactively informs citizens of public services and handles applications on their behalf" — things like medical appointments, public service applications, and tax guidance, handled automatically rather than just searched for.

About two-thirds of Koreans already use AI services, but "most generative AI users rely on the free versions of AI platforms developed by foreign companies" — ChatGPT (23.45 million monthly active users), Gemini (8.45 million), and Claude (2.41 million), per an April 2026 Wiseapp·Retail survey. The government's stated worry: those free foreign tiers "may become vulnerable to future policy changes by global big-tech companies, such as subscription fee hikes or service discontinuation." About a third of the population still can't use AI at all.

Selected providers "must use domestically developed AI models that meet the criteria for a sovereign foundation model for at least 50% of the service, while also using domestic AI models developed by companies other than themselves for at least 30%." Foreign models are permitted only "where minimally necessary," and the government won't subsidize that portion.

Here's the part worth sitting with: providers "will also be expected to develop their own revenue models, for example, by utilizing user prompt data collected in the course of providing their services, so that they can continue offering services that meet or exceed a certain standard of performance." A free national AI utility, financed in part by monetizing the prompts citizens type into it.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Bae Kyung-hoon said: "AI for All is more than a simple service. It is the calculator and computer of the AI era, enabling people to work, learn, and go about their daily lives with AI. It is also a platform that ensures everyone can share fairly in the benefits of the new economic structure that AI will bring about."

MSIT frames this as just the start: "After 2027, MSIT will continue to upgrade AI agents so that, ultimately, all citizens can carry out economic and social activities through their own AI agents," working toward what it calls an "AI Universal Basic Society where everyone can benefit from AI."

The government is backing this with 512 B200 GPUs this year and national budget funding from 2027 onward. Beta testing begins at the end of September 2026, with full rollout targeted within the year. It's a genuinely ambitious experiment in treating AI access as a public utility, paired with a genuinely unresolved question about what "free" actually costs citizens in prompt data.

Source: Ministry of Science and ICT, Republic of Korea (official press release): https://english.msit.go.kr/eng/bbs/view.do?bbsSeqNo=42&mId=4&mPid=2&nttSeqNo=1285&sCode=eng