South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT said on Tuesday it will begin soliciting projects for an "AI open-source software development and utilisation support programme."

The 9.2 billion won programme will select 10 projects. AI and software companies, universities and research institutes can participate individually or in consortiums. The programme is divided into two areas: support for developing open-source software in AI, with about 5 projects and up to 700 million won per project, and support for using open-source AI and software, with about 5 projects and up to 1.14 billion won per project.

The development support track will back software development such as infrastructure and data processing commonly used to implement AI solutions. The ministry plans to release the outputs on public repositories such as GitHub so that anyone in South Korea and abroad can use them. The utilisation support track will help commercialise AI solutions and services for use in manufacturing, healthcare and the public sector by using verified open-source software.

Nam Cheol-gi (남철기), the ministry's director general for software policy, said "the decisive factor in AI competition will shift to software capabilities that rapidly implement AI services and operate them stably." He said the programme would contribute to building South Korea's open AI ecosystem.