The Pusan National University (PNU)'s spelling checker, developed by PNU's Artificial Intelligence Lab (AI Lab) which operated for free for 20 years, was found to have been abused to develop large-scale artificial intelligence technologies in July. The damage, such as doubling server fees, occurred, but the AI Lab decided to maintain its free services. 

On July 6, the AI Lab announced that it would restrict some use on the Korean spelling checker page, called the "PNU Spelling Checker." This decision was made because abnormal access was detected on the page, and a considerable cost was charged to the AI Lab.

According to the AI Lab, over 5 million uses were detected in the server from specific IP addresses for a month. Considering that the average daily usage of the site is 300,000 cases per day and 10 million cases per month, this is an abnormal figure. Unlike the general usage method accessed through browsers, the AI Lab also counted the number of accesses through the cloud as 1 million for this month. The AI Lab revealed that there were 500,000 use records from Naver Cloud and 500,000 uses from Google Cloud.

The AI Lab analyzes that the spelling test site was used to learn large language models. It means PNU's free spelling test site was used commercially to develop other AI technologies. As a result, PNU had to pay twice the cost of using the existing server.

However, there was no special investigation or legal punishment because legal guidelines for AI-related data copyright are currently insufficient. Even if PNU's AI Lab requests an investigation, no one can predict the outcome of the punishment. Kwon Hyuk-Chul (Prof. of Information and Computer Engineering, PNU), who developed the PNU Spelling Checker, said, "There has been controversy about AI writing materials in the academic world, but it has become quiet again. We need social consensus on learning materials for large language models."

The AI Lab has taken some server-blocking measures to prevent another abuse case. Accessing a spelling checker site from a cloud other than a browser is considered illegal and blocked. Legal access is possible only by using keys distributed by the AI Lab to use the checker in the cloud. Prof. Kwon said, "We did not allow any impact on general users. There weren’t any more abnormal approaches after the measure."

The PNU Spelling Checker will continue to be provided free of charge. However, the AI Lab is considering placing advertisements to improve the system. If the AI Lab introduces a method of processing information directly on the cloud using the revenue from advertising placement, it can reduce errors in the server itself. Thadar Soe (Computer Engineering, 23), who usually uses the spelling checkers, said, "I naturally understand the reasons to put advertisements to improve the system."

The PNU Spelling Checker, developed in 1991 and released free of charge in 2001, is the first spelling checker in Korea and has a high national utilization rate. Hancom’s spelling check program, “Arae-A Hangul," is also based on this checker. Prof. Kwon said, "I hope that more and more people try to use our language correctly through the spelling checker at PNU."

Reporter Yoon Ji-Won

Translated by Ha Chae-Won