South Korea has abruptly halted its nationwide rollout of AI-generated textbooks after the ambitious education experiment collapsed almost as soon as it began. What was meant to be a cutting-edge push toward personalized learning instead turned into one of the country’s most embarrassing EdTech failures in years.
The “AI Digital Textbook Promotion Plan,” launched in June 2023 under former President Yoon Suk Yeol, aimed to deploy 76 AI-generated textbooks across thousands of schools. The government promised faster publishing cycles, reduced teacher workloads, and tailored lessons for students in math, English, and coding. Twelve publishing companies signed on, investing heavily in the project while government officials framed AI as essential for preparing students for the future.
But according to reporting from Rest of World, the rollout last March immediately ran into chaos. The digital textbooks were plagued with basic factual mistakes, broken features, and persistent technical glitches. Teachers said the material was so poorly assembled that it created more work rather than reducing it. One high school math teacher said that tracking student progress using the AI system was nearly impossible, adding that “the overall quality was poor, and it was clear it had been hastily put together.”
Students shared similar frustrations. “All our classes were delayed because of technical problems with the textbooks,” one student told RoW. “I also didn’t know how to use them well.”
Ironically, the government had sold the initiative partly on the idea that AI would speed up textbook production. In reality, at least one major publisher delivered its digital books significantly behind schedule, adding even more disruption during the start of the school year.
The program also stumbled legally. When the initiative was announced, then-education minister Lee Joo-ho declared the AI textbooks would be mandatory by law, prompting immediate backlash from teachers’ groups and parents. Facing mounting legal criticism, the ministry downgraded the plan to a voluntary one-year pilot.
By October, just four months after launch, the government reclassified the AI textbooks as “supplemental materials.” This allowed teachers to stop using them, and more than half of all 4,095 participating schools quickly opted out.
The reversal has left publishers in financial crisis. Having invested the equivalent of $567 million to meet the government’s $850 million commitment, several companies say they now face existential losses. They have formed an “AI Textbook Emergency Response Committee,” which recently filed a constitutional petition urging the government to overturn the downgrade.
What the courts decide remains to be seen. But one conclusion is already clear. South Korea’s push to reinvent education with AI has become a cautionary tale about what happens when technological ambition outpaces classroom reality.
