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‘They Said A.I. Saved Me’: How South Korea Is Checking on Its Seniors

It holds tailored conversations that are two- to five-minutes long and designed to ease... It occasionally cuts off a user midsentence or hallucinates unauthorized promises — like the time it...

NYTIMES 입력 2026.04.28 13:02 0

‘They Said A.I. Saved Me’: How South Korea Is Checking on Its Seniors

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‘They Said A.I. Saved Me’: How South Korea Is Checking on Its Seniors

In the world’s fastest aging society, artificial intelligence is being used to make care calls to older adults who live alone and to fight dementia.

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For Park Jong-yeol, an 81-year-old Vietnam War veteran, the call service bot has become a fixture in his daily fight against illness and cognitive decline, reminding him to eat well, take his medication and stay social.

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Woohae Cho for The New York Times

Choe Sang-Hun

Reporting from Seoul, Bucheon, Seongnam and Yongin, South Korea

April 28, 2026,

12:01 a.m. ET

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Chung Yun-hee awoke to a body in revolt. Drenched in sweat and wracked with pain, the

septuagenarian crawled into the bathroom of her small, quiet apartment on the outskirts of Seoul. She was still hunched over the toilet, vomiting, when her smartphone rang.

A bright, articulate female voice asked how she was doing. Ms. Chung managed a few strained words —

too sick to talk

— and hung up.

Help arrived anyway. The caller, an A.I. chatbot nicknamed “Talking Buddy,” immediately alerted a social worker. Within hours, Ms. Chung was in surgery for an acute hernia.

“Doctors said I could have been in serious trouble had I arrived any later,” Ms. Chung, 77, recalled of the episode in late 2024.

“They said A.I. saved me.”

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Chung Yun-hee passed the tulip field that she cultivates with friends at an elderly center in Bucheon, South Korea.

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Woohae Cho for The New York Times

South Korea is

aging

faster than any other nation

. In a mere 15 years, the number of people over 65 has doubled to more than a fifth of the population. The country does not have enough doctors, social workers or family caregivers to support its elderly. Artificial intelligence is helping fill some of that gap.

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