The Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence (ISSAI) took part in the seminar “Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on Library Activities” held on February 18 at the Nazarbayev University Library. The event brought together representatives of the Centralized Library System of the Akimat of Astana to discuss the role of AI in library services and knowledge management.
During the session, ISSAI’s mission and strategic focus on developing sovereign AI solutions for Kazakhstan were presented, along with the Institute’s key AI products, including Oylan, Kazakhstan’s first Vision Language Model and Mangisoz, a text-to-speech translation engine.Their capabilities in multimodal reasoning, document understanding, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Kazakh-language processing were demonstrated. Participants actively engaged in discussion, asked questions about implementation and ethics, and tested the products themselves.
Aigerim Sarsenova, ISSAI Senior External Affairs Manager, presented the Institute’s work, highlighting how these AI solutions can support library digitization and knowledge management.
A central theme of the discussion was the importance of high-quality local data. Libraries hold rich collections in Kazakh and other languages, and their systematic digitization can significantly reduce the shortage of Kazakh-language datasets. As an international example, MarIA, developed by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center using National Library web archives, was highlighted to illustrate how collaboration between research institutions and libraries strengthens a language’s digital presence.
The seminar underscored the strategic importance of cooperation between ISSAI and library institutions to enhance Kazakhstan’s digital knowledge infrastructure and expand the global presence of Kazakh-language content.