Instead of outsourcing, employees develop their own tools — from patent examination assistants to document search apps — tailored to real workplace needs
From patent examination assistants to document search tools, staff at South Korea's intellectual property authority are developing a growing range of AI applications to solve problems on the job.
The Korean Intellectual Property Office announced Tuesday it had launched an internal AI app store, giving employees a shared platform to build AI-powered tools for their own workflows and make them available across the organization.
The app store is designed to do more than collect AI programs. Officials said it establishes a continuous cycle — identifying ideas in the field, having employees build the apps themselves, then sharing and spreading them through the platform.
The initiative reflects a broader shift in how the office approaches workplace innovation. The rapid advance of generative AI has popularized what practitioners call "vibe coding" — directing a program's development through natural language rather than formal programming knowledge — and the office is actively incorporating that trend into its operations.
Under the new model, frontline employees who best understand day-to-day challenges identify problems and propose improvements, then use AI to build and deploy the tools they need.
Previously, improving a workflow typically required commissioning a separate system through a formal IT project. The office said it is now shifting to a bottom-up approach in which field staff identify problems and build the necessary apps with AI directly.
The agency said the approach will dramatically cut the time and cost of external development while allowing workplace needs to be addressed far more quickly, building out an AI-driven innovation framework in the process.
The apps developed so far reduce unnecessary manual work and streamline document searches and data analysis, freeing staff to focus on their core professional responsibilities.
Work-related AI apps built through vibe coding are being gathered in one place to encourage sharing and wider adoption, with the office citing time and cost savings driven by the field-led approach.
"In the era of AI transformation, it is not enough to simply use AI well — it is important for the employees who best understand frontline challenges to build AI tools themselves and for the entire organization to use them together," said Kim Yong-seon, commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office. "Centered on the AI app store, we will create a virtuous ecosystem in which employees' ideas translate into real workplace innovation and outstanding AI use cases spread across the organization, dramatically raising the productivity of intellectual property administration."
kwonhl@heraldcorp.com
