ETRI claims historic first in establishing global standard for ‘AI testing'

A team of Korean researchers has achieved the feat of establishing a key international standard for verifying the safety and reliability of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. This achievement is the result of over five years of effort, and South Korea has come to lead not only AI technology but also AI norms and reliability verification standards.

Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced that the “Overview of AI System Testing” standard, which defines the procedures and methodologies to test AI systems, was officially established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO/IEC JTC1) on the 3rd of November, 2025.

This achievement holds great significance in that it is the first key international AI testing standard led and established by South Korea in the ISO/IEC Artificial Intelligence Technical Committee (SC 42).

This achievement proves that ETRI has positioned itself as a “First Mover” beyond a “Fast Follower” in the global AI technology hegemony competition.

ETRI stated that this achievement is the first to define AI full-lifecycle test methodologies such as data quality, model performance, and bias of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, the institute explained that this technology is significant in that it is the establishment of the first international standard to be used for international official testing and international conformity assessment in the future. It also means that standards for verification and certification methods and conformity testing methods, which are required as essential items for high-impact and high-risk AI systems in the AI Basic Act and the EU AI ACT, have been created.

Specifically, this standard extends the existing software testing standard to fit AI systems, defining new testing stages such as ▲data quality testing and ▲model testing tailored to AI characteristics.

Through this, a foundation has been laid to comprehensively verify everything from data quality, a core element of AI systems, to model performance. In addition, the concept of “risk-based testing” was introduced to check potential risks of AI in advance.

Based on this, AI-specific testing procedures were specified, such as ▲bias testing for AI bias verification, ▲adversarial testing using input value changes, and ▲drift testing to check performance degradation during operation.

This standard is a “general” standard that serves as the basis for subsequent standards to be established in the future, such as ▲AI Red Teaming Testing and ▲Generative AI Testing, so it is of great significance that Korea designed the foundation of the AI reliability verification system.

“This international standard was first proposed by Jeon Jong hong, Principal Researcher at ETRI’s Intelligence & Information Standards Research Section, and was finalized in collaboration with Dr. Stuart Reid, a internationally recognized authority in software testing and Technical Director of STA Testing Consulting, with both serving as co-editors.” STA Testing Consulting, a software testing specialist company, is one of ETRI’s startup companies.

The two organizations formed a Joint Working Group (JWG 2) between the AI Standardization Committee (SC 42) and the SW Testing Committee (SC 7) under ISO/IEC JTC 1 and jointly promoted development for five years.

This achievement serves as a technical basis for supporting “Sovereign AI” and the “AI G3 Leap” strategy promoted by the government, which aims to ‘implement safe and reliable AI’.

By establishing global standards for the objective verification of AI system performance and risk, Korea has laid the groundwork to lead international norms in AI safety and trustworthiness in the international market.

ETRI President Bang Seung chan stated, “Ensuring the safety and reliability of AI is a core task in the era of artificial intelligence. The establishment of this international standard will be a turning point for Korea such that it will be able to lead not only AI technology but also AI testing and evaluation norms.”

Lee Seung yun, head of the Standards Research Division at ETRI, also said, “This standard is the ‘skeleton’ of common criteria for testing and evaluating the safety and reliability of AI systems worldwide, created by our own hands. We will actively strive to lead ‘Sovereign AI testing technology and standardization’ in the future.”

Principal researcher Jeon Jong Hong, who led the establishment of this standard and is also a member of the National AI Strategy Committee, emphasized, “Standardization activities of JTC 1/SC 42, which creates common core AI standards, should be strengthened,” and “It is time to create a national AI standardization strategy and make more active and long-term investments in international AI standardization.”

Based on this established standard, ETRI plans to lead the development of international AI testing standard series by continuing to develop subsequent series such as the Red Teaming standard (ISO/IEC 42119-7), which is currently under development, as well as the Ontology standard (ISO/IEC 42119-10) and AI Benchmark (ISO/IEC 42119-11).

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This achievement was made through the linkage and expansion of the “Development of International Standards for AI-based Medical Device Performance Evaluation Technology (2020.9.~2023.2.)” project and the “Development of International Standards for AI/Machine Learning Medical Device Performance Evaluation (2023.1.~2025.12.)” project, which were promoted as part of the “Inter-ministerial Full-cycle Medical Device R&D Project” supported by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

About Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)

ETRI is a non-profit government-funded research institute. Since its foundation in 1976, ETRI, a global ICT research institute, has been making its immense effort to provide Korea a remarkable growth in the field of ICT industry. ETRI delivers Korea as one of the top ICT nations in the World, by unceasingly developing world’s first and best technologies.