The Ministry of Science and ICT announced Wednesday that it would inject 499 billion won ($420.6 million) of supplementary budget this year to support artificial intelligence big data-powered businesses as part of the Korean New Deal.

The budget will be provided to 2,103 local businesses, developers and institutions, according to the ICT Ministry. The ministry added the investment is expected to create around 28,000 jobs.

Of the total, 292.5 billion won will be spent on constructing data sets, which are to become sources for different types of machine learning engines developed here, according to the ministry.

The businesses and institutions working on big data projects include mobile carriers SK Telecom and KT, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Naver, Kakao, Seoul National University and KAIST.

The ministry is expected to secure data sets featuring 700 million text units, 60,000 hours of audio data, 60 million images and 15,000 hours of video, through which different business sectors can benefit.

The government will also separately spend 40.5 billion won to forge big data platforms where the government will make the collected data available to a wide range of local industries.

To nurture cloud services, the government will cooperate with local cloud solutions firms, including KT, NBP and NHN. The amount allocated for developing cloud services is 25 billion won.

The remaining money will be spent to support local companies to utilize and participate in enhancing big data sets, cloud services and AI solutions that the ministry has developed with local institutions and businesses.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)