The Ministry of Education will pilot “Library AI” at the National Library starting in the fourth quarter of this year. Members of the public can use paid AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for free with a library card, but in the first wave, each library will initially provide only 5 computers.
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A survey conducted by the Institute for Information Industry shows that in Taiwan, the proportion of people using free AI exceeds 70%. Free versions of ChatGPT and free versions of Gemini are not useless; however, there is a capability gap between the free and paid versions that is getting wider and wider.

As we enter 2026, flagship models such as GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus will be opened only to paying users. What free users can actually access are models from the previous generation—and even the one before that. Legislator Ge Ru-jun defines this problem as “AI equity”: not everyone can afford the monthly AI subscription fee of NT$600–700.

The Ministry of Education’s response is to make libraries the entry point for paid versions of AI.

What is the “Library AI” program?

The core mechanism is simple: one library card grants access rights to paid AI tools. Starting in the fourth quarter of this year, three pilot sites will open simultaneously: the National Library, the National Public Information Library, and the National Taiwan Library. Each will be equipped with 5 dedicated computers pre-installed with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. Visitors to the library will not need to pay any additional fees throughout their visit.

Minister of Education Zheng Ying-yao said the Ministry of Education will assist all 47 national universities in promoting related initiatives. For private universities, Director of the Higher Education Division Liao Gao-xian explained that the existing funding channels can be used to apply for support.

Libraries serve as a buffer against the digital divide. Now, AI subscription fees have become a new digital divide, and libraries are once again being assigned the same role.

Limitations and significance of the demonstration program

However, having only 5 computers per library is the most direct scale limitation of this plan.

The National Library serves more than one million visits per year. With 5 computers, even if each computer is used 8 hours a day and each session lasts 30 minutes, it can serve at most 80 visits per day. That figure is facing millions of people nationwide who hold library cards, as well as hundreds of thousands of students who are structurally disadvantaged when it comes to AI tools.

Moreover, although these are paid subscriptions, even the strongest programming-writing functions of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are mostly subject to usage caps and time limits; in practice, many issues still need to be resolved.

Overall, “Library AI” is more of a policy signal than a comprehensive solution. Its significance lies in the Ministry of Education officially acknowledging that the accessibility of AI tools is a public issue, and that the library system is an appropriate venue for intervention. But there is still a gap between acknowledging the problem and solving it.

More worth tracking is the promotion progress among the 47 national universities: the campus-wide coverage efficiency is far higher than the library’s single-point model. If these national universities can provide legally compliant collective licensing for paid versions of AI on campus, allowing students to use them with student IDs, it would be closer to establishing a systemic AI equity infrastructure.

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