South Korea to become first G20 nation to offer free AI to all its citizens

My take: What South Korea is doing is treating artificial intelligence as public infrastructure, on par with the internet or electricity. The Ministry of Science and ICT opened a competitive bid on July 14 for a general-purpose chatbot launching in beta in September and formally in December, free and unlimited for the country's 52 million citizens. The government will supply up to 512 Nvidia B200 GPUs, and at least 50% of the foundation models must be domestic.

The context that explains it: 44.5% of Koreans, about 23 million people, already use generative AI regularly, and most rely on foreign platforms. ChatGPT alone has 23.45 million users in the country. The government wants to reduce that reliance. If it works, other countries will follow.

For any organization or creator that depends on AI tools, this move reinforces a clear trend: governments are taking an active position in the AI ecosystem, which could change access, regulations, and pricing for the tools we use. Asking whether your country has its own AI strategy is no longer philosophy; it is part of planning.