Korea to launch sovereign AI for cybersecurity this year: science minister

Korea will launch a sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) model specializing in cybersecurity by the year's end to respond to growing security threats in the digital space, the science minister said Thursday.

Minister Bae Kyung-hoon's comments come amid growing concerns over digital security after Washington abruptly imposed export controls on its advanced AI models, including Anthropic's Mythos 5, which specializes in vulnerability detection.

"We are pushing to create an AI model specializing in cybersecurity within this year by training our existing sovereign AI model on security-related data," Bae said during a policy briefing held in Cheong Wa Dae, presided over by President Lee Jae Myung.

The minister noted that the current level of Korea's sovereign AI is not enough to respond to evolving cybersecurity threats helped by generative AI, reaffirming his previous calls that the country should review developing a frontier model, on par with Mythos, in the long run.

During the briefing, officials also discussed ways to institutionalize "white hacking," or legally breaking into computer ...