Strengthening support for autonomous driving and artificial intelligence industries through regulatory sandboxes
Continuous monitoring through imposing safety measures, on-site inspections, etc.
The Personal Information Protection Commission (hereinafter referred to as the Personal Information Protection Commission) is promoting the use of original image data for the development of autonomous driving artificial intelligence.
The Personal Information Protection Commission reviewed the proposal for a regulatory sandbox for the use of original video data submitted by two autonomous driving robot companies (Wooah Brothers Co., Ltd. and Newbility Co., Ltd.), and as a result, established a plan to allow the use of original video data on the premise of implementing strengthened safety measures for personal information protection and conducting continuous monitoring through on-site inspections, etc., and presented this to the Ministry of Science and ICT, which oversees the regulatory sandbox system in the ICT field, on the 28th, thereby promoting the use of original video data.
In the past, when developing autonomous driving technology in fields such as robotics and automobiles, image data that had been pseudonymized (mosaic processed, etc.) to prevent individuals from being identified was used.
However, there have been persistent concerns that it may be difficult to secure product competitiveness in domestic and foreign markets due to issues such as low pedestrian recognition rates, and in a 2023 report by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in the United States titled 'Does Image Anonymization Impact Computer Vision Training?', it was announced that the average accuracy can be improved by 0.8 to 17.6% when using original images compared to anonymized images.
Accordingly, the Personal Information Protection Commission has established a research team with relevant experts and industry members since last September to establish stronger safety measures standards so that safety levels exceeding the level of pseudonymization can be secured even when using original video data. In the future, video data will be used for the development of autonomous driving artificial intelligence, etc. For companies that require original use, we plan to impose strict safety measures through a regulatory sandbox system.
The Personal Information Protection Commission said, “In the era of the data economy, where data utilization promotes innovation across industries and creates new values, we will establish clear guidelines so that creative and challenging attempts by companies in the artificial intelligence field do not face difficulties due to unclear regulations,” adding, “We plan to strengthen policy support through close communication with relevant ministries and related industries.”