The Broadcast Media Telecommunications Committee said on Wednesday it selected 8 new projects for the Digital Media Innovation Technology Development programme, investing 72.7 billion won in broadcast media research and development through 2030.

The committee is pushing the programme to respond to shifts in broadcast media usage patterns such as the spread of over-the-top services, and intensifying global competition. It aims to drive innovation in South Korea's broadcast media industry and secure technological competitiveness. A total of 7.9 billion won will support this year's new projects.

Project selection was carried out by the Information and Communications Technology Planning and Evaluation Institute (IITP). The committee said it was a result of integrating and redesigning 14 broadcast media R&D programmes that had previously been pursued on a small-scale and fragmented basis. It will be pushed ahead as a representative broadcast media R&D programme in the future.

The programme consists of 3 tracks: core technology development for intelligent media production; core technology development for my-media platforms; and AI agent technology development for personalised media services.

In the intelligent media production segment, SBS will oversee development of technology that applies AI across the entire process from content planning to editing. It will pursue media production technology based on conversational multimodal AI that processes text, images, voice and video together, divided into 3 subprojects. Separately, it also includes development of lightweight collaborative media production and real-time visualisation technology led by Gom & Company.

In the my-media platform segment, Gemini Soft will oversee 3 subprojects, including automatic generation of personalised video, an AI persona model and an AI model specialised in broadcast media metadata. AI agent technology development will be led by Adwon, aiming to secure intelligent media service agent technology that searches for, recommends and composes content reflecting user preferences and usage context.

Kim Jong-chul (김종철), chairman of the Broadcast Media Telecommunications Committee, said the new projects were a starting point to lead innovation across broadcast media production and distribution based on AI and data. He said the committee would contribute to improving production efficiency and creating an environment in which people can enjoy personalised media services.