Culture Minister Choi Hwi-young said that what the cultural sector needs should set the direction of artificial intelligence development, calling for a shift toward what he described as "culture-driven AI." The remarks were read as a call for a culture-first rather than an AI-first policy in the cultural field.
Speaking at the launch of the first Culture Technology Alliance at the Eliena Hotel in Seoul's Gangnam district on the 15th, the minister said participants must ask together what forms of expression creators want to realize, what technical challenges companies need to solve and what content and experiences they intend to build. "The answers to those questions should guide the direction of technology development. This is the culture-driven AI that the Culture Technology Alliance aims for," he said.
He added that culture-driven AI means taking demand from the cultural sector and the imagination of creators as the starting point for technology development, and turning the strengths of Korean content into new technologies and services.
With the concept of culture-driven AI still loosely defined, the minister said collaboration between AI technology and cultural creation and research matters most. The alliance is also needed to improve the cost-effectiveness of an AI industry that requires astronomical spending, he said.
"Culture-driven AI requires cooperation among all of you, who bring different experiences and capabilities," the minister said. "When the technology and platforms of leading companies, the expertise and ambition of smaller firms, the firsthand field experience of creators, and the research capacity of academia and research institutes come together, we will be able to find answers even to problems that individual companies or creators could not solve alone."
The Culture Technology Alliance is a public-private body set up by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Culture Technology Institute for Planning and Evaluation (KOCTIPE) to pursue research and development policy for culture-driven AI, which takes demand from the cultural sector and the imagination of creators as the starting point for technology development.
The first alliance is divided into four subcommittees covering games and interactive content, video and media content, music and performance content, and story source content. The games and interactive content subcommittee includes Nexon Korea, Smilegate, Softzen, Dobby Canvas, Verse8 Korea, Story Taco, Myongji University and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute. The video and media content subcommittee consists of CJ ENM, CJ 4DPLEX, MBC C&I, Giantstep, Reconlabs, Studio Freewillusion, Art Center Nabi, Chung-Ang University, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute and the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology.
The music and performance content subcommittee brings together Kakao Entertainment, SBS, Galaxy Corporation, Metarocket, Gaudio Lab, Neutune, K-Zer, Emotionwave, the Korea Institute of Acoustics, Music and AI Convergence, the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute. The story source content subcommittee includes Writer Company, CJ ENM, Muhayu, Hanter Global, Hivemind, A2Z Entertainment, Korea University and Pusan National University.
Starting from this launch, the participants plan to research and develop culture-driven AI technologies based on field demand and forecasts of future needs, and to reflect the results in new projects for 2028 and in a medium- to long-term investment strategy for culture technology.