Kim Jong-yoon (김종윤), CEO of Scatter Lab, the operator of AI character chat service Zeta, did not attend the National Assembly Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee's audit of the Broadcasting, Media and Communications subcommittee on Oct. 12 due to a pre-scheduled business trip to the United States, it was confirmed. Kim is scheduled to return on Oct. 14. It has not been decided whether he will attend the comprehensive audit.

A statement of reasons for absence Kim submitted to the National Assembly on Oct. 12 said he left on an overseas trip scheduled for Sept. 27. He had received a request to appear at the audit on Sept. 22, but the travel schedule had already been confirmed, it said.

Kim is in San Francisco, carrying out schedules including local events and meetings with investors with eight employees from Scatter Lab's machine learning (ML) team.

Kim was also selected as a witness for the National Assembly Education Committee's audit on Oct. 23 over issues related to youth AI chatbot services. The committee also demanded the attendance of Lee Se-young (이세영), CEO of Wrtn Technologies, operator of AI character chat service Crack, and Lee Kwan-hyeong (이관형), CEO of Eleven, operator of Babychat.

At the audit of the Broadcasting, Media and Communications subcommittee, issues including harmful conversations involving teenagers and excessive immersion in companion-type AI chatbots such as Zeta were put on the table. Lee Ju-hee (이주희), a lawmaker from the Democratic Party, urged the establishment of measures to protect teenagers, saying Zeta's monthly usage time is 110 million hours, more than twice that of ChatGPT.

Scatter Lab announced it would introduce protection measures within this year, including limiting teenagers' basic daily Zeta usage time to 3 hours and capping monthly payments at 100,000 won.

A Scatter Lab official said, "A pre-scheduled overseas business trip overlaps with the schedule to attend the parliamentary audit, making it unavoidable to attend this audit," and added, "We are currently checking internally the schedule related to attending the comprehensive audit."