The development of generative AI and LLM will play an important role in promoting digital transformation, and increasing labor productivity in many business fields. LLMs in Vietnamese can make interpretations, recognize voices, answer questions and summarize documents in Vietnamese language in an accurate way.

Therefore, despite challenges, many LLMs are being developed by domestic technology firms. 

On AI Day 2023, VinAI announced a project on open source code for an LLM in the Vietnamese language, called PhoGPT. The project aims to develop models similar to ChatGPT, but target Vietnamese users, serving Vietnamese culture.

PhoGPT can understand and write in the Vietnamese language. The model has been trained from the beginning with data in Vietnamese language, independent to other models in the world. The researchers also want to expand the model and make it active in other languages as well. 

In late December 2023, VinBigdata, an arm of Vingroup, officially put ViGPT app into operation. This is a version of ChatGPT based on an LLM developed by VinBigdata.

ViGPT has more than 600GB of data in Vietnamese language fine-tuned from many different fields. The outstanding advantage of ViGPT in comparison with other apps is that the information focuses on specific fields of Vietnam, such as law, history, culture, famous men, beautiful landscapes, and typical characteristics of regions.

Prof Vu Ha Van, scientist of VinBigdata, said the launch of the Vietnamese version shows Vietnam’s capability of mastering technology.

“By mastering technology, we can exploit and protect national data, as well as have an intellectual and ideological system with a Vietnamese identity,” Van said. 

“This direction will allow us not only to eliminate reliance on international products, but also to gradually improve the accuracy of information containing Vietnamese historical and cultural values, and minimize the outflow of Vietnamese data abroad," Van added.

At the AI Forum, organized annually by the Zalo AI Summit, Zalo introduced an LLM in the Vietnamese language developed by Zalo AI.

The LLM is developed by Zalo AI based on Transformer architecture, and trained with Flash Attention and Llama with high-quality guiding materials. Its model aims at multi-task operations, such as translating documents, creating and writing content, extracting information from documents, and answering questions.

Prior to that, the Make in Vietnam LLM was used to write millions of poems on the occasion of International Women’s Day March 8 and Vietnamese Women’s Day October 20.

Currently, Zalo is developing its LLM on different model sizes, from one billion to 30 billion parameters. The Kiki chatbot version shown at Zalo AI Summit was trained on the 7-billion parameter model.

According to Zalo’s team of developers, Zalo will continue upgrading its LLM before introducing it to users and supplying fundamentals to utility apps such as chatbot, customer care and content generation.

In Vietnam, AI-based virtual assistants have helped a lot in different fields.

A representative of the Supreme People’s Court said at the Ministry of Information and Communications’ (MIC) conference that virtual assistants support judges. According to Deputy Chief Justice Pham Quoc Hung, the AI application to support judges has gained impressive results.

Previously, one judge needed two secretaries in administrative and professional work. With a virtual assistant, only one secretary is needed, and the secretary can give professional assistance to thousands of judges anywhere and at anytime. 

Thai Khang