The 3rd Smart Life Week opened today at COEX in Gangnam under the theme “Envisioning Future Urban Life with AI,” focusing on how tangible AI applications are transforming cities and the lives of citizens, enabling more convenient and safer living.
The 3rd Smart Life Week opened on the 6th at COEX in Gangnam, Seoul. This year’s event focuses on how tangible AI is transforming cities and the lives of citizens, enabling more convenient and safer living. Google is participating in the event, offering the public hands-on experiences with AI-powered services such as outfit styling and business card creation. (Photo by CNA reporter Yang Chi-fang, Seoul, October 6, 2025)
Seoul Smart Life Week runs from today through the 8th, with this year’s event focusing on “Physical AI”—technology that steps beyond digital spaces to interact with people and solve real-world problems. Through Physical AI technologies spanning fields such as humanoid robots, autonomous driving and mobility, and AI-driven healthcare and caregiving, the event showcases the expanding potential for applications across industries and daily life.
At the opening ceremony, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon noted that this marks the third edition of the event and expressed hope that integrating this new Physical AI technology would elevate the initiative to the next level. “If the internet connected people to people, and smartphones connected people to information, then AI is now closely connecting humanity with the daily life of the city,” he said.
Mayor Oh pointed out that, particularly with the advent of robotics and Physical AI, AI has transcended the digital realm to permeate the city, directly transforming the lives of citizens. He posed the question: “How will AI make citizens’ daily lives safer, more convenient, and more meaningful?”
He noted that AI is increasingly becoming part of the lives of Seoul residents through innovations such as early-morning autonomous shuttle buses, autonomous taxis, caregiving and wearable robots, firefighting robots, and inspection drones.
The opening ceremony also featured Marc Raibert, founder of the Boston Dynamics AI Institute. “Someday, I want to have a robot at home that can wash my car or look after my children while I’m away; we’ve all fantasized about having robots do these things,” Raibert said.
Reibert noted that no robot has yet entered the home market as a freely available consumer product, primarily due to factors such as cost, practicality, and safety. However, he stated, “I want to create a robot that can observe a person working, understand what it sees, and then perform the task itself.”
Additionally, during today’s opening performance, the traditional performance group TAGO took the stage alongside a robot. Centered on the theme “AI x TAGO—AI, Awakening the City,” the show combined percussion, dance, and robotic movements to depict the imagery of humans using powerful drumming to awaken the AI robot, with humans and AI joining forces to open the gateway to the city of the future.