Interior ministry opens contest for AI-built disaster safety tools

South Korea's interior ministry said Sunday it will hold a contest for civil servants who have used generative artificial intelligence to build their own disaster and safety work tools, seeking cases that have already produced measurable gains in the field.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety is running the competition with the National Information Society Agency and the Korea Local Information Research and Development Institute. Entries from central and local government officials are open until Nov. 10, and four winners will be selected.

The contest is aimed at officials who used generative AI to create tools their own offices needed and then put them into service, rather than tools built by professional developers. As disasters have grown more complex and varied, demand has grown to improve the systems officials use to respond to them, the ministry said.

Entries will be judged on what they actually improved — time saved on tasks, less manual work and fewer errors, faster collection and analysis of data, and better support for judging a disaster situation and deciding how to respond — as well as how easily each case could spread to other agencies and departments. After a written review narrows the field to eight cases, a presentation round will determine the four winners.

"With the spread of generative AI and vibe coding, we have opened an era in which anyone, not just professional developers, can turn their own ideas into digital tools," said Hwang Kyu-chul, head of the ministry's AI government office.