After eight years of organization, the Zalo AI Summit AI forum continues to attract great interest from the technology community in Vietnam, with the direct participation of more than 400 AI engineers and AI enthusiasts, along with tens of thousands of people following the event through livestream channels.

Opening the event, Nguyen Minh Tu, Chief Technology Officer of Zalo, spoke about the development of AI around the world. The important question is not how many billions of parameters the model runs on, but what problems the model solves and how effective it is.

“At Zalo, we develop core features that directly serve users. One of the core features is Dictation, converting voice to text. This is a much faster and more convenient method. The number of monthly Zalo users using the Dictation feature has reached 7.5 million. Another widely used feature is Translation. In addition, Zalo also promotes AI in operations, for example, building chatbots for customer care,” Tu said.

The opening presentation was presented by Associate Prof Dr Quan Thanh Tho from HCMC University of Technology, offering an accessible look at the concept of AI agent and multi-agent AI, along with typical examples that have proven effective in Vietnam.

The session presented by Dr Tran Minh Quan from Nvidia provided a clear perspective on Physical AI and the role of this technology in the next wave of technology digitalization. 

According to Quan, Physical AI can be understood as an AI layer capable of listening, understanding commands, and creating output that directly affects the physical world through robots, machinery, and automated systems. This is a step forward to help AI move beyond the digital environment, participating directly in the physical world and actual operation processes.

Dr Chau Thanh Duc and Dr Nguyen Truong Son gave a presentation on the process of AI-fication in Vietnam with stories from Zalo.

In 2019, Zalo AI developed AI to detect sensitive images, and then developed FaceID and eKYC systems in 2022.

In the following years, new AI products and features were born such as AI Dictation (converting voice into messages), AI Avatar, KiLM (Large Language Model), VMLU (a set of criteria for evaluating the Vietnamese language capacity of LLMs), Kiki Info and Digital Citizen Assistant. New products and features are widely applied in life, affirming Zalo's AI-fication efforts and bringing AI to all people.

The presentation with the theme “Chips - the hidden undercurrent beneath the AI tsunami” by Dr Pham Hy Hieu from OpenAI brought another perspective of AI through the lens of chip technology, showing that parallel to the development of AI models is the “evolution” of chip lines.

According to Hieu, AI not only will grow strong thanks to data and smart algorithms but  to increasingly powerful hardware platforms, playing a silent but decisive role behind the scenes.

Honoring young Vietnamese AI talents

Taking place from October 27, 2025, the Zalo AI Challenge 2025 competition attracted 1,060 teams, competing with two topics: "AeroEyes - Finding and Rescuing with AI-Powered Drones", building algorithms to control drones to perform search and rescue missions, and "RoadBuddy - Understanding the Road through Dashcam AI",  building a driving assistant capable of understanding video content from dashcams to quickly answer questions related to traffic signs, signals, and driving instructions.

At the Zalo AI Summit 2025 event, five winning teams in two groups received special prizes from the program.

With the theme “AI as an efficient partner”, Zalo AI Challenge 2025 had a total prize value of up to $12,000. The competition was accompanied by Realtime Robotics company, media partners ZNews and Zalo Video, and sponsor LEADTEK Vietnam, along with a team of prestigious advisors who are experts in the field of AI.

Practical activities and presentations at the Zalo AI Summit 2025 event contributed to proving that Vietnam has entered the era of AI-fication, so that AI becomes a sustainable growth driver for the country.

Thai Khang