On December 11, 2024, the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence (ISSAI) participated in the AI Demo day, organized by the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and presented ISSAI KAZ-LLM model – a Kazakh Large Language Model to the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
ISSAI Founding Director Prof. Atakan Varol and ISSAI Executive Director Yerbol Absalyamov had an honour to demonstrate the model to the President.
Tailored to the country’s unique multilingual and multicultural context, ISSAI KAZ-LLM supports Kazakh, Russian, and English, with additional capabilities in Turkish. This makes it a bridge across linguistic divides and a key tool for advancing generative AI in low-resource languages.
The ISSAI team collected, processed, synthesized, and translated more than 150 billion tokens of information (words) ensuring robust language performance. The model’s training has achieved competitive results in Kazakh, Russian, and English, rivaling global AI leaders. The work on the project started in April 2024, and training of the model required five months. Training data were sourced exclusively from publicly available resources, such as Kazakh websites, news articles, and online libraries, supplemented by data contributions from various organizations.
ISSAI KAZ-LLM provided a unique hands-on experience to local IT talent, strengthening national AI capabilities. Kazakh researchers participated in all stages of the process, from data preparation to model deployment, creating the foundation for sustainable innovation in artificial intelligence. The project contributed not only to the creation of an advanced AI tool but also to the growth of Kazakhstani AI specialists.
Moreover, during the Demo Day ISSAI also presented to the Head of State its first commercial product Soyle App (soyle.nu.edu.kz). This product recognizes speech, synthesizes voice, and instantly translates into Kazakh, Russian, English, and Turkish, serving as a universal communication tool in the country’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.
President Tokayev expressed his strong support for the ISSAI projects and initiatives. He emphasized that the ISSAI Kaz-LLM model is one of the main components of AI development in Kazakhstan. He thanked the Institute’s team for their dedication and professionalism.
