The Ministry of Science and ICT on Friday held the finals of the "2026 AI Creation Contest" at the Kakao AI Campus.

Held for the first time this year, the AI Creation Contest is a key programme of the "National AI Competition" and is open to young children and elementary school students. Under the theme "A future to live with AI", participants use AI to produce fairy tales, children’s songs and webtoons.

There are 3 categories: "Story with AI" for creating fairy tales, "Sound with AI" for making children’s songs and "Art with AI" for producing webtoons. The contest uses 4 AI tools from South Korean companies — Sola, MathAI, MiriCanvas and WeToon — to give participants direct experience with domestically developed AI technology.

Preliminaries, with about 1,700 participants, began in Busan on June 21 and were held across 10 regions nationwide including Incheon, Jeju, Seoul, Wonju, Daejeon, Daegu, Andong, Gwangju and Jeonju.

About 300 people, including finalists who passed the preliminaries and their families, attend the finals. After the contest, various AI experience booths that families can join together are also operated.

Ryu Je-myeong (류제명), second vice minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, "As the AI Creation Contest has confirmed the future generation’s interest in and potential for AI, we will actively support them so they can continue to grow."