SEOUL, September 08 (AJP) - An agreement signed at an international film summit in southern France on Monday (local time) will put South Korean artificial intelligence to work inside France's national broadcast archive.
Naver signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with the Institut national de l'audiovisuel, France's national broadcast archive, at the Lumière Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. The two sides will carry out joint research on AI-based preservation and restoration of archive material, develop new digital content and experiences drawn from the holdings, and exchange specialists and seminars, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Tuesday.
The ministry described the pairing as an attempt to combine the archive's capacity to preserve and digitize audiovisual heritage with Naver's AI technology and platform capabilities.
The deal emerged from a gathering that had spent the day working through what AI is doing to the people who make films. President Lee Jae Myung, who co-chaired the summit with French President Emmanuel Macron, used his opening address to name coexistence between human creativity and AI as one of four priorities for the industry, alongside the crisis facing movie theaters, protecting cultural diversity through support for independent films, and building a mutually beneficial relationship between local and global content businesses. Participants adopted the Lumière Declaration, which frames film as a public good.
The Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA) was created in 1975 when France broke up its state broadcasting monopoly, and it has held the country's audiovisual legal deposit since 1992. That obligation requires it to record 179 television channels and radio stations continuously. Since the deposit was extended to the internet in 2006, it has also collected the contents of more than 14,000 websites and 12,600 social media accounts, according to the institute.
For Naver, the agreement arrives in the middle of a year spent selling its AI abroad. The company operates HyperCLOVA X, a family of large language models trained heavily on Korean-language material, and its cloud unit has marketed the technology to overseas governments and institutions as sovereign AI, meaning systems a country can run without depending on foreign providers. Naver signed an infrastructure agreement with Advanced Micro Devices in March to build computing capacity tuned to HyperCLOVA X, and expanded a cloud partnership with Nvidia in June.
Neither the ministry nor Naver disclosed what the archive work will cost, when it will begin, or what it is expected to produce. The memorandum names no research program and sets no deadline, and the announcement says nothing about whether Naver will be permitted to train its models on INA material.
The summit drew 274 participants from 58 countries, including culture ministers, international organization officials, studio and media executives, directors and actors. Lee and Macron used it to launch a five-year investment program under which South Korea and France will each put 500 million euros into their domestic film and audiovisual industries from 2027 through 2031, a combined 1 billion euros ($1.17 billion).
Culture Minister Chae Hwi-young led the South Korean delegation through the day's working sessions. He came to the job from the industry the agreement now involves, having headed the Naver division at NHN Corporation, which was later renamed Naver Corporation, before serving as its chief executive and then as an adviser to the company. He went on to run the travel and ticketing group Interpark.
Chae separately signed a film co-production treaty with Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli. Films recognized as joint productions under the treaty will be treated as domestic films in both countries, making them eligible for film fund incentives, tax credits and subsidies, with the movement of crew and equipment guaranteed.
Two other South Korean parties signed accords at the summit. The content producer SLL agreed with Mediawan, described by the ministry as Europe's largest media group, to develop remakes of each side's intellectual property formats for Korean and European audiences and to pursue multi-genre co-productions aimed at the global market. The Korean Film Council agreed with the Motion Picture Association to cooperate on discovering and training new talent, exchanging specialists, sharing information and holding screening events.
"The South Korean government, as a hub of international audiovisual content production and the most trustworthy partner, will widen the freedom to create and will spare no policy or institutional support," Chae said in his closing address.
AJP Takeaways
- Naver signed a strategic memorandum with the Institut national de l'audiovisuel at the Lumiere Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence to research AI-based preservation and restoration of France's national broadcast archive, which has held the country's audiovisual legal deposit since 1992 and records 179 television channels and radio stations continuously.
- Lee Jae Myung, who co-chaired the summit with Emmanuel Macron, named coexistence between human creativity and AI one of four priorities for the industry, and participants adopted the Lumiere Declaration framing film as a public good.
- Naver has spent the year marketing its HyperCLOVA X models to overseas governments and institutions as sovereign AI, signing an infrastructure agreement with Advanced Micro Devices in March and expanding a cloud partnership with Nvidia in June.
- Naver and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism disclosed no cost, no timeline, no named research program and no terms on whether Naver may train its models on archive material.
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