Charting a unique path, Vietnamese enterprises develop AI with localization

Since ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the world has rapidly developed with the emergence of more and more advanced new models. The most recent is the birth of DeepSeek from China and the “smartest AI model on Earth” Grok 3 from xAI.

The increasingly strong acceleration of global AI has also promoted great strides in research and exploitation of the enormous potential of AI in Vietnam. Not only investing in developing large language platform models LLM for Vietnamese, domestic technology companies are also actively applying AI to develop specific solutions for each field. There, products and applications with the ability to understand Vietnamese in depth can well serve the needs of domestic organizations, businesses and users.

In terms of research and training to develop models, according to the Vietnamese Multitask Language Understanding Benchmark Suite for Large Language Models (VMLU) platform for evaluating and ranking Vietnamese LLMs developed by Zalo AI and the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), by the end of 2024, VMLU had published 45 Vietnamese LLM models from domestic and foreign developers. The platform also received evaluation requests from more than 155 organizations and individuals.

This is a signal for the proliferation of large language models targeting Vietnamese users.

LLM's strong development for Vietnamese users.

Some typical Vietnamese LLM models of domestic developers are achieving high rankings on the VMLU rankings when compared with famous international models such as Llama-3-70B (Meta), GPT-4 (OpenAI), including KiLM-13b of Kiki AI and ViGPT-1.6B-v1 of Vin BigData.

In terms of application, practical AI solutions are being deployed in a variety of fields, including electronic identification for the finance and banking industry, traffic information assistants, facial recognition for control and anti-counterfeiting when entering and exiting organizations, etc.

The KiLM-13b model training and development unit - Kiki is also bringing a series of AI application products into application in the domestic market. Notably, Kiki Auto - the first "Make in Vietnam" car assistant to reach 1 million installations (as of December 2024).

Kiki Auto in-car assistant provides a variety of features for users.

Next to that is Kiki Info - a general information Q&A assistant about science, history, technology, common life knowledge, traffic laws..., while also supporting content creation and providing entertainment recommendations for specific user needs.

Kiki Info Q&A Platform.

Zalo messaging platform, serving nearly 78 million Vietnamese users, is also integrating a series of advanced AI features such as voice-to-text conversion to help send text messages via voice quickly, and text-to-speech conversion to help the elderly receive and exchange information easily.

For special events of the year such as Lunar New Year, March 8, Mid-Autumn Festival, October 20, user birthdays, etc., the platform also deploys AI cards so that the community can send unique wishes to relatives and friends. In addition, other AI features of Zalo that have attracted a large number of users in recent times are AI Avatar and zSticker AI.

AI greeting cards for October 20 on Zalo.

In recent years, Zalo AI has also collaborated with brands in advertising campaigns right on the Zalo messaging platform. Specifically, during Tet 2024, Zalo AI accompanied Pepsi to bring the AI ​​Avatar experience to help users own personalized images imbued with the atmosphere and spirit of the new year.

On the occasion of Tet 2025, the two sides continue to diversify the user experience with a series of activities including creating AI avatars, creating AI videos with family reunion moments, minigames to design shirts with favorite statements and family photos with the support of AI.

The progress in applying AI to solve practical problems, serving various areas of life, has affirmed the capacity of Vietnamese technology organizations in catching up with the global wave. Instead of depending on foreign solutions, “Make in Vietnam” AI products have taken full advantage of the ability to understand the Vietnamese language to serve the essential needs of domestic users. Thereby, competing fairly with global names right on their home turf.