Seoul: South 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.

According to Yonhap News Agency, Bae stated during a policy briefing held in Cheong Wa Dae, presided over by President Lee Jae Myung, that the country is pushing to create an AI model specializing in cybersecurity by training its existing sovereign AI model on security-related data. The minister highlighted that the current level of South Korea's sovereign AI is insufficient to respond to evolving cybersecurity threats aided by generative AI. He reaffirmed his previous calls for the country to consider developing a frontier model, on par with Mythos, in the long term.

During the briefing, officials also discussed ways to institutionalize "white hacking," or legally breaking into computer systems with the owner's consent to identify vulnerabilities. The science ministry is preparing legislation that would provide the legal grounds to perform ethical hacking on companies without their consent for vulnerability detection under certain conditions, a science ministry official said.

Bae also noted that South Korea was ranked third in AI competitiveness by an international ranking agency. He declared his intention to elevate South Korea one rank higher, to second place.