TLDR: South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) has unveiled its first detailed draft guidelines for generative artificial intelligence (genAI), aiming to provide clarity on personal data processing and strengthen privacy safeguards across the AI lifecycle. The guidelines address legal uncertainties for AI practitioners and outline measures for development, training, and application of genAI models.
SEOUL, South Korea – The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), South Korea’s leading data protection authority, announced on August 18, 2025, the release of its groundbreaking draft guidelines for the processing of personal data in generative artificial intelligence (genAI) systems. This move is designed to address existing legal uncertainties within the country’s personal information protection act and to systematically integrate robust privacy safeguards into the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Unveiled at an open seminar in Seoul on August 6, the ‘Personal Information Processing Guide for the Development and Use of Generative AI’ provides a comprehensive framework for companies and institutions. PIPC Chair Ko Hak-soo emphasized that the guidelines aim to ‘provide clarity to iron out legal uncertainties that AI practitioners have encountered and systematically incorporate privacy-safeguarding perspectives,’ ultimately enabling ‘privacy and innovation to coexist.’
The proposed framework meticulously divides the generative AI lifecycle into four critical stages: purpose setting, establishing strategies, AI training and development, and application and management. For each stage, the guidelines outline specific legal considerations and minimum safety measures. This includes recommendations for clarifying the legal basis for AI training data, addressing potential risks such as data contamination and ‘jailbreaks,’ and ensuring responsible management of AI agents. Furthermore, organizations are strongly encouraged to establish robust AI privacy governance, ideally centered around a Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) responsible for internal compliance and privacy risk management.
In addition to the lifecycle stages, the guidelines categorize genAI models into three types: Large Language Models (LLMs) as a service, off-the-shelf LLMs, and self-developed LLMs, providing tailored guidance for each. The PIPC stated that these guidances were finalized after extensive consultation with a public-private policy advisory council, ensuring they offer concrete measures for businesses utilizing personal data for genAI training.
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This initiative comes amidst a global push for AI regulation and follows earlier actions by the commission, such as ordering app stores to suspend downloads of DeepSeek’s AI platform due to concerns over its data management practices. The PIPC’s new guide also reflects emerging AI trends, including AI agents, knowledge distillation, and machine unlearning, and is designed to be regularly updated to keep pace with technological and policy advancements, fostering a balanced environment where innovation thrives alongside stringent privacy protection.
