South Korea pulls plug on AI textbooks, leaving schools, companies without funding for them

AI-powered textbooks are now not official South Korean textbooks, removing the legal and financial grounds for using them in schools. -- ST PHOTO: CHANG MAY CHOON

SEOUL (The Korea Herald/ANN): South Korea’s National Assembly passed a Bill on Monday (Aug 4) stripping artificial intelligence-powered digital textbooks of their legal status as official teaching materials, dealing a heavy blow to the previous Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s flagship education reform project.

The amendment narrows the legal definition of textbooks to printed books and e-books, excluding “learning support software using intelligent information technology”.