South Korea Promises Free Homegrown AI Chatbot This Year

A woman checks her phone as she walks along a street in Seoul on July 13, 2026. (AFP)

08:43-21 July 2026 AD ـ 06 Safar 1448 AH

A woman checks her phone as she walks along a street in Seoul on July 13, 2026. (AFP)

South Korea plans to launch this year a free artificial intelligence chatbot service powered by domestic technology, Seoul said Tuesday, seeking to reduce reliance on foreign platforms.

Roughly half of South Korea's population of 51 million used generative AI applications in February, according to market research firm Wiseapp-Retail.

The vast majority -- nearly 23 million -- used ChatGPT, developed by US firm OpenAI.

As the technology has spread, countries have become increasingly concerned with so-called "AI sovereignty" -- developing domestic models serving their own security, privacy and business interests.

A spokesperson for South Korea's science ministry told AFP Tuesday that a government initiative aims to roll out a general-purpose AI chatbot as well as an AI agent capable of more complex tasks by the end of the year.

"To persuade users to move away from foreign AI services they already pay for, we need to provide services that are even better," Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon told reporters on Monday.

"We want Korea to move quickly into the era of AI agents and compete in that field," he told a news briefing.

The government's first priority under its "AI for All" scheme is to integrate public AI agent services that would provide functions unavailable on existing foreign platforms, the minister said.

The plan is also designed to overcome the digital divide by providing AI service for free, compared with many existing models which require monthly subscription payments.

From 2027, Seoul plans to expand the system into personalized AI agents capable of assisting users with tasks such as asset management, learning support and retirement planning.

"Providing free domestic AI services encourages users to adopt Korean platforms, allowing demand and data to accumulate and helping the domestic AI market grow on its own," Kim Yong-beom, senior presidential secretary for policy, said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

A public AI agent could also help Koreans identify and apply to relevant government services, according to Kim.

The initiative comes as South Korea's AI Basic Act took effect on Tuesday, establishing a national legal framework for the industry.

New rules require labelling of generative AI content, introduce a management framework for tools that may affect people's physical safety or fundamental rights, and expand government support for the sector.

The legislation designates 10 sensitive fields -- including nuclear power, criminal investigations, loan screening, education and medical care -- that are subject to heightened requirements on AI transparency and safety.

John Ternus to Lead Apple into the Age of AI

View of an Apple logo at an Apple store in Paris, France, April 23, 2025. (Reuters)

09:29-31 August 2026 AD ـ 18 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

John Ternus to Lead Apple into the Age of AI

View of an Apple logo at an Apple store in Paris, France, April 23, 2025. (Reuters)

John Ternus takes over as Apple's chief executive on Tuesday, inheriting a company that towers over the smartphone market but trails its rivals in artificial intelligence.

One of his biggest challenges will be balancing the company's dependence on China while parrying acute political pressure from the White House.

The handover ends Tim Cook's 15-year run, replacing the operations specialist who built Apple's supply chain with the engineer who built its hardware.

Ternus, 51, joined Apple's design team in 2001 and worked his way up to senior vice president of hardware engineering, reporting to Cook.

He leads the engineering teams behind Apple's entire product lineup, including the iPhones that generate most of the company's revenue.

He gets barely a week to settle in, with Apple holding its annual iPhone event on September 9, where it is expected to unveil its first foldable handset.

"Tim Cook left the house in phenomenal order," said Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at investment firm Yorkville Ives & Co.

"But now it's about Ternus defining the AI chapter."

Ives expects the new chief executive to lean into what he knows.

"There's no reason to fix what's already working," he said, predicting Ternus will concentrate on hardware innovation while leaving Cook's supply chain intact.

Some analysts had argued software chief Craig Federighi was the more logical pick for a company scrambling to catch up on AI.

Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies, said that misreads how consumers actually adopt technology.

"Consumers are still buying hardware first, and it's going to be like that for a long time," she said. "You're not going to discover the value of AI if you're not interested in the hardware."

Ternus earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and worked as an engineer at Virtual Research Systems before joining Apple.

Inside the company he is credited with driving a push to make products more durable, reliable and resilient, and with design work that cut their carbon footprint.

The harder question is what kind of leader he becomes.

"Even people that know him now don't know him as a CEO," Milanesi said.

"You might know him as the head of engineering, but once you're CEO, things change. Your responsibility is bigger, your power is bigger. You're dancing a different kind of dance."

- 'Learn on the job' -

Nowhere is that gap wider than in the geopolitical role Cook excelled at, courting both Beijing and Donald Trump's White House to protect a supply chain that runs largely through China.

Apple's manufacturing operation is among the most complex in corporate history, a web of hundreds of suppliers and assembly lines that Cook painstakingly built over decades.

Cook in recent years began shifting some of the work elsewhere -- iPhone assembly to India, other production to Vietnam -- but the diversification has been gradual with China, one of Apple's biggest consumer markets, still anchoring the system.

Complicating matters, Trump has repeatedly demanded Apple build iPhones on American soil, threatening tariffs on those made overseas.

Cook avoided the heaviest blows of Trump's trade war by cultivating the president directly, making US investment commitments and political donations -- all while also keeping Beijing onside.

The tricky political terrain will be new for Ternus.

"He knows Apple Park like the back of his pocket in terms of hardware," Ives said of Ternus. "But on the global stage -- that's probably one of the biggest areas where he's going to have to learn on the job."

Cook is not going far. He becomes executive chairman of Apple's board on the same day, with a mandate the company has said includes engaging policymakers around the world.

"That was really clever," said Milanesi, arguing the arrangement frees Ternus from a role Cook has handled alone for years.

The September 9 iPhone event will be the first public measure of the handover.

A foldable iPhone would be the most significant redesign in years, and Ternus will be its face -- eight days into the job.

"This is a moment that they created for him," Milanesi said.

Technology

Communications Minister: Saudi Arabia Advances to Lead AI Era, Puts People First

Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha affirmed that the unwavering support of the Saudi leadership has been instrumental in shaping an inspiring national success story in technology and the digital economy. (SPA)

Asharq Al Awsat

05:56-31 August 2026 AD ـ 18 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

05:56-31 August 2026 AD ـ 18 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Communications Minister: Saudi Arabia Advances to Lead AI Era, Puts People First

Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha affirmed that the unwavering support and empowerment of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, have been instrumental in shaping an inspiring national success story in technology and the digital economy.

He added that this support has helped position Saudi Arabia at the forefront of the global artificial intelligence (AI) race, reinforcing the Kingdom’s emergence as a leading force in technological innovation and the digital economy, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Monday.

The Minister said that Saudi Arabia is advancing with a clear ambition to lead the AI era, supported by a growing digital economy, advanced infrastructure, national talent, and an investment ecosystem capable of transforming innovations into Saudi products and companies that compete in global markets.

His remarks came during the government press conference organized by the Ministry of Media at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Center in Malham, on the occasion of the launch of LEAP 2026. The conference was attended by Minister of Media Salman Al-Dossary and several officials.

Alswaha emphasized that Saudi Arabia's technological ambitions are measured not only by indicators and investments, but by their impact on citizens and residents across all regions. He notes that Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, closely monitors telecommunications coverage and service quality through periodic reports on service levels, complaints, and remedial measures.

He explained that the gap in access to telecommunications services has narrowed from a baseline of 50% to 1%, while the service quality gap has declined from 15% to 5%, as a result of coordinated efforts with the Communications, Space and Technology Commission and telecommunications companies.

He said these results translate into faster, more accessible government services for citizens and residents, along with AI-powered digital experiences that enhance satisfaction and improve quality of life.

Technology

Meta’s Teen Safety Deal Runs into an Unsolved Problem: Proving Age

A Meta logo is seen at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 14, 2023. (Reuters)

16:55-28 August 2026 AD ـ 15 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Meta’s Teen Safety Deal Runs into an Unsolved Problem: Proving Age

A Meta logo is seen at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 14, 2023. (Reuters)

Meta's landmark settlement with nearly every US state promises curfews and time limits for teens on Instagram and Facebook -- but rests on age and parent checks nobody has figured out how to make work.

The deal, which ended a federal trial in Oakland, California, on Wednesday, gives Meta one year to identify which of its users are 13 to 17 years old.

Those accounts will have curfews and time limits switched on by default, and only parents will be allowed to loosen them.

How that gets enforced is unclear -- and any system Meta builds risks angering privacy advocates, who warn it hands platforms and governments yet another way to identify users, infringing on civil liberty.

For the new regime to work, Meta must determine the age of every user in the participating states and territories, adults included.

Methods could include identification documents, mandatory selfies, or analysis of user activity. Any account not verified within 14 days will face the same constraints as a teenager's.

These approaches have already faltered elsewhere.

Eight months after social networks were banned for under-16s in Australia, teen usage has climbed back almost to previous levels, thanks to virtual private networks, or VPNs, that conceal a user's real identity and location.

As for parents, the agreement offers no way to establish that a supervising adult is who they claim to be.

What would stop an older sibling from passing themselves off as a guardian, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers asked Wednesday as she weighed Meta's plans.

"There is some fluidity, very intentionally," said Nicklas Akers, a California prosecutor, who added that there was no plan to require a birth certificate or identification from the parent.

- Margin of error -

With no reliable way of verifying ages and parents, curfews and time limits remain theoretical.

"Teens are notorious for finding workarounds to these types of rules, and parents can also override some of the most stringent ones," said social media industry expert Jasmine Enberg.

"Looking ahead, that could take some of the responsibility away from Meta and put it on parents, with the goal of helping insulate the company from similar cases in the future," she added.

In France, where a ban on under-15s was just struck down by the Constitutional Council, many children get around the rules with their parents' help, according to the communications regulator Arcom.

If Meta cannot verify a user with identification, such as a driver's license or passport, it will estimate age by analyzing that user's activity -- collecting still more data in the process.

"This enshrines Meta's harmful surveillance into law, and it will compromise users' privacy and anonymity while increasing their exposure to data breaches and government data requests," the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a statement.

The settlement does include safeguards, limiting data collection to what age estimation requires and letting adults wrongly classified as minors appeal.

It is "the most significant intervention in children's online safety we have seen," said Iain Corby, head of the AVPA, an industry association for age-verification providers.

Identification documents carry their own risks. In October, a breach at a third-party age-verification company potentially exposed the government IDs of 70,000 Discord users.

- Improvising -

With no reliable or trusted methods available, everyone is improvising.

OpenAI applies a restricted version of ChatGPT to minors by guessing a person's age from their usage patterns, an approach Meta's settlement allows.

In the European Union, where the tracking of minors is tightly constrained, it has delayed the rollout for months.

France has sketched out a different path, in which a trusted third party verifies ages using the "double-blind system" already in place for adult sites.

The verifier does not know which site is asking, and the site gets only a binary answer: allowed or not.

Nothing like that exists in the United States, where Meta will run the checks itself -- and keep the data.

South Korea Promises Free Homegrown AI Chatbot This Year

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