The Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of National Defense and SK Telecom will join forces to use a "homegrown artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model" in the defence sector.

The science ministry, defence ministry and SKT signed a memorandum of understanding on May 14 at SKT's Euljiro Tower. Based on the agreement, the defence ministry will develop a defence-specialised AI model by using SKT capabilities as an elite team in the homegrown AI foundation model project promoted by the science ministry.

The defence ministry's "defence-specialised AI foundation model" has been selected as one of the national AI projects in which the government supports graphics processing units (GPUs). SKT and the defence ministry will cooperate on developing and testing a defence-specialised AI model based on a homegrown AI foundation model, collecting, providing and using open data in the defence sector, and supporting GPU use linked to the national AI project.

In the second quarter of this year, the defence ministry will use allocated GPUs to begin developing a lightweight model of the homegrown AI foundation model with SKT. SKT will support development based on its large language model (LLM) capabilities and its GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) infrastructure. The model will be used for defence-sector testing and will be continuously advanced through additional training.

Choi Dong-won (최동원), director general for AI Infrastructure Policy at the science ministry, said it would actively support the defence sector's AI transition by bringing together private-sector technological capabilities and the government's GPU infrastructure.

Jun-beom Jeon (전준범), director of the Defense AI Planning Bureau at the defence ministry, said it would continue to expand private-sector cooperation, including with SKT, to effectively introduce AI across the defence sector.

Myung-kook Kim (김명국), head of Industrial AI at SKT, said it was meaningful to contribute to strengthening K-defence competitiveness based on SKT capabilities. He said SKT would strengthen K-AI competitiveness by expanding the use of AI across areas including finance, manufacturing, healthcare and the public sector.