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.<\/p>\n
A bright, articulate female voice asked how she was doing. Ms. Chung managed a few strained words \u2014 too sick to talk \u2014 and hung up.<\/p>\n
Help \u200barrived anyway. The caller\u200b, an A.I. chatbot nicknamed \u201cTalking \u200bBuddy,\u201d immediately alerted a social worker. Within hours, \u200bMs. Chung was in surgery for an acute hernia.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoctors said I could have been in serious trouble had I arrived any later,\u201d Ms. Chung, 77, recalled of the episode in late 2024. \u201cThey said A.I. saved me.\u201d<\/p>\n
South Korea is aging<\/a> faster than any other nation<\/a>. In \u200ba 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.<\/p>\n Talking Buddy, a care call service\u200b developed by Naver Cloud<\/a> and adopted by cities and counties across the country,\u200b check\u200bs on tens of thousands of seniors living alone in isolation or poverty. It holds tailored conversations that are two to five minutes long and designed to ease loneliness, detect emergencies and stimulate cognitive function to stave off dementia.<\/p>\n On a recent morning, \u200bthe bot noted the fine weather and suggested that a walk\u200b would lift Ms. Chung\u2019s spirits. When she mentioned \u200bplanting flowers, the bot \u200breminisced about \u201cpink and white cosmos with a yellow center,\u201d as if conjuring a memory.<\/p>\n The \u200btechnology remains a work in progress. It occasionally cuts off a user midsentence or hallucinates unauthorized promises \u2014 like the time it impulsively offered to send bags of rice to a cash-strapped resident.\u200b Yet users have embraced it with a warmth that has \u200bsurprised even its creators. One woman confessed her depression to the bot\u200b, saying her dog ran away and never came back. Another played the piano for it\u200b; others invited it over for lunch, knowing full well it \u200bcouldn\u2019t come, according to social workers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes me feel that I am not forgotten,\u200b that someone is paying attention to me\u200b,\u201d Ms. Chung said.<\/p>\n In Seongnam, a city just outside Seoul, another septuagenarian sat in the Roa Neurology Clinic, her fingers hovering nervously over a tablet. Diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment \u2014 the stage between normal aging and dementia \u2014 she was learning to use SuperBrain<\/a>. An A.I.-powered digital therapeutics program developed with government funding, it offers personalized exercises designed to slow cognitive decline.<\/p>\n \u200bImages of a tiger and other animals appeared on the tablet\u2019s screen, each paired with a number. Then, only the animals remained, and she was asked to recall their numbers. She leaned forward, concentrating hard. This was more than a game \u2014 it was a fight for her independence.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew something was wrong when I couldn\u2019t remember the name of the fruit I had just eaten or when I kept forgetting the passcode to my door,\u201d the 72-year-old sa\u200bid quietly. Ashamed of the stigma surrounding dementia in South Korea, she asked to be identified only by her last name, Min.\u200b \u201cIt was frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n Her doctor, Wang Min-jeong, has seen this fear grow steadily over the past decade. Today, half of her patients arrive worried about dementia. \u201cThey fear it more than cancer\u200b \u2014 the thought of slowly losing control of \u200btheir mind and body and turning into \u200ban enormous, prolonged burden on their families\u200b,\u201d Dr. Wang said.<\/p>\n The stakes are national. Experts \u200bwarn of a \u201cdementia tsunami,\u201d with cases expected to double to two million by 2044.\u200b The government is racing to detect impairment early, \u200bas \u200bcombining medication\u200b with lifestyle changes and cognitive training \u200bcan slow the disease, said Dr. Yang Dong-won, a neurologist at Seoul St. Mary\u2019s Hospital\u200b and former head of the Korea Dementia Association.<\/p>\n Dr. Yang sees the toll every day. Kim Kwae\u2011im, who took her mother to see Dr. Yang, has watched both her parents succumb to Alzheimer\u2019s. Her father began hoarding scrap metal and discarded newspapers, filling their apartment and drawing complaints from neighbors. Her mother, once a housemaid, can no longer work. \u201cIt feels like things are falling apart,\u201d the daughter said.<\/p>\n For \u200bspecialists like Dr. Yang, SuperBrain offers relief. The program automatically grades exercises assigned to the patients, adjusts their difficulty and sends feedback to physicians \u2014 saving time and yielding more reliable data, since unmonitored patients often exaggerate \u200bor conceal how much they do. \u201cWe can monitor\u200b how often they did their exercises,\u201d Dr. Yang said.<\/p>\n Since 2021, SuperBrain has logged 1.5 million exercise sessions with more than 10,000 patients nationwide, said Han Seunghyun, the chief executive of Rowan<\/a>, which created SuperBrain. \u201cIt\u2019s like having a seasoned doctor living inside the tablet,\u201d said Kang Sungmin, one of the neuropsychiatrists who helped design it.<\/p>\n \u200bThe other tool, Talking Buddy, began as a simple virus-tracking tool programmed to ask a single, repetitive question during the pandemic: Do you have a fever? But as the world locked down, local welfare officials \u200bapproached its creator, Naver Cloud, with an urgent report: Many elderly citizens were slipping into the shadows, isolated at home and at risk of dying alone.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were making care calls to say hello, but there were too many people and not enough hands,\u201d said\u200b Ok Sang-houn, a Naver executive. \u201cThey asked us for a version that could actually talk \u2014 that could help them feel a little less invisible.\u201d<\/p>\n