The dream of a virtual assistant for all Vietnamese people has been emphasized by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh , clearly affirming the direction of artificial intelligence development in Vietnam. However, achieving this requires many factors, not only AI technology, but also a platform that is widely accessible to all Vietnamese people.
Always aiming to create user-friendly, convenient, and easy-to-use products for Vietnamese people, Zalo has realized its dream of building an AI assistant for Vietnamese people in 2025 with the launch of products such as the Kiki Info comprehensive question-and-answer assistant and the Digital Citizen Assistant.
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Zalo has realized its dream of building an AI assistant for Vietnamese people by 2025. |
Young people of Gen Z are developing AI assistants.
Le Tran Truc Van (born in 2000) currently works as a Product Specialist for various artificial intelligence products at Zalo. While the world was chasing the "AI bubble," Van and her team at Zalo chose a unique approach: starting with the user. This mindset has been maintained throughout her time developing products at Zalo and remains a guiding principle in all the products she has participated in.
"AI is just a bridge – its task is to solve a real problem in the lives of Vietnamese people," Van said.
For Van, the most important criterion isn't how large the model is, how many standards it can meet, or its ranking on international charts. It all starts with a single question: What do Vietnamese users need, and can AI truly make their lives easier?
When embarking on the development of products like the Kiki Info comprehensive question-answering assistant or the Digital Citizen Assistant, the AI engineering team realized that the challenge lay not simply in optimizing the quality of the language model – the foundation for the development of these assistants – but also in making the model useful in practice, meaning it could answer correctly, accurately, and without preemptively guessing user questions.
In reality, large language models (LLMs) are very good at answering free-form questions, but in sensitive fields such as law, administration, and education , even a small error can lead to major consequences. Therefore, the Digital Citizen Assistant product development team always prioritizes practical application by placing the quality and reliability of the product at the highest level.
To develop the Digital Citizen Assistant, the product team relied on over 300,000 reputable, verified, and continuously updated Vietnamese legal documents. A multi-tiered system helps eliminate malicious or false answers, integrates a mechanism for mandatory source citation, and employs noise filtering and optimization algorithms to help the model accurately identify legal passages instead of making assumptions.
Van Huu Quoc, a senior artificial intelligence engineer at Zalo AI, stated: “When applying LLM to products like Kiki Info, especially the Digital Citizen Assistant, the team needs to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the system, because this is an assistant that supports citizens with administrative procedures and legal questions. The assistant needs to synthesize information from reputable sources such as the National Public Service Portal (dichvucong.gov.vn) and cite relevant laws and procedures, helping users access the necessary information accurately.”
Developing practical AI products is a journey of "holding a lamp to guide the way"—constantly encountering obstacles and constantly learning. Because outside the laboratory, every technology is judged by the real value it creates.
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Developing AI products is essentially a journey of "holding a lamp to guide the way." |
Vietnamese people are using AI assistants built by Vietnamese people.
Looking back on our development journey, what makes the team most proud isn't the technical milestones or growth figures, but rather the fact that Vietnamese users are using and satisfied with an AI assistant developed by Vietnamese people. Users can look up information about administrative procedures and receive accurate, quick answers. Users ask questions like, "What should I do if I lose my documents?", "Will I receive severance pay if I quit my job?", "What changes will there be to the personal income tax in 2025?", and the AI assistant responds to help them resolve these issues immediately.
In a constantly changing technological world, the emergence of this citizen assistant product affirms that Vietnamese people can fully master AI and create value for the Vietnamese user community.
According to the product development team, the next phase of AI is not about chasing models on larger scales, but about AI becoming deeply ingrained in every touchpoint of the digital ecosystem. When AI becomes a natural part of every operation, process, and interaction in the lives of Vietnamese people, that's when the technology will truly spread. Like the Internet 20 years ago, AI will become the foundational infrastructure for the digital society.
The journey of the Digital Citizen Assistant development team is the clearest proof that: Artificial intelligence sovereignty is not a declaration, but the ability to create products that are truly useful for the people living in their own homeland.
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The Digital Citizen Assistant development team. |
For young people at Zalo like Truc Van or Huu Quoc to have the opportunity to develop meaningful AI products for Vietnamese users, trust and empowerment from the leadership team are essential. Nguyen Truong Son, Director of Science at Zalo AI, shared: “Instead of simply inspiring them, I think I’ve created an environment where they can find inspiration themselves. I believe that the young people at Zalo are all very talented and have inherent potential. My task is to help them orient themselves correctly, provide sufficient resources, and empower them to freely experiment, freely fail, and freely learn.”
Source: https://znews.vn/doi-ngu-gen-z-hien-thuc-hoa-giac-mo-tro-ly-ai-cho-nguoi-viet-post1610712.html
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