Source: Chosun Ilbo (Chosun.com)

The government announced on 13 July that a pilot “AI Legal Secretary” will begin on 14 July to provide immediate AI answers to legal-related questions from central and local public officials. The tool is intended to support questions arising in policy planning, drafting, and execution and is built to base responses on statutes, administrative rules, autonomous regulations and precedents.

The system incorporates 60,000 Supreme Court precedents and 240,000 data items related to statutes and administrative rules, and it prioritised about 50,000 autonomous-regulation cases from five metropolitan cities/provinces: Seoul, Incheon, Daejeon, Sejong and Gyeonggi. The government expects reduced statute-review time by officials to produce faster administrative processing visible to the public. The service was built in 1 units month by public officials from three ministries—the Ministry of Government Legislation, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, and the Ministry of Science and ICT—without specialised development personnel. Answers are generated using the government-wide “sovereign AI foundation model,” described as an independent foundation model created using domestic technological capabilities and data reflecting the country’s culture and history. Central and local officials can access the service via “OnAI Lab,” an AI conversation service on the administrative intranet, but the government instructs that AI responses are for interim review only and are not final legal judgments. The government plans to expand the AI knowledge base and support systems so public officials can directly develop and utilise AI services, anticipating enhanced work efficiency. Deputy Prime Minister Bae Kyung-hoon, also Minister of Science and ICT, said the initiative’s significance lies in applying the independent AI foundation model to administrative settings. The webpage also discloses that personal data and device information may be processed and shared with 212 partners, that precise geolocation may be used, and that consent and cookie settings can be managed by users; vendors may process personal data on a legitimate-interest basis and cookies/device identifiers can be stored or read for profiling and advertising purposes.