Kazakhstan’s Cybernet AI startup has unveiled an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model for Turkic languages. This is the first-ever AI model designed specifically for the Turkic language group, not adapted from existing English-language solutions, according to the Kazakh Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development.
The project was implemented with the support of the Astana Hub and the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, as part of the Microsoft for Startups program.
Tanat Uskembayev, Managing Director of the Astana Hub believes that Cybernet AI’s product opens up the opportunity for Turkic countries to scale digital services and customer services in their native languages using artificial intelligence without sacrificing quality and at an affordable cost. “For Kazakhstan, this means a transition from being a consumer of global AI solutions to a developer of its own internationally competitive technologies,” he commented.
The ASR model is based on the Kazakh, Turkish, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Azerbaijani, and Tatar languages. It also correctly recognizes mixed Turkic-Russian speech—a format widely used in real-life customer-business conversations and when receiving government services in the former Soviet Turkic-speaking republics.
Until now, Kazakhstan, like other countries in Central Asia, had to use international ASR models, primarily oriented toward English. Such solutions poorly account for Turkic phonetics, accents, and mixed speech, limiting the quality of voice AI services.
“We deliberately chose not to adapt English-language models and created an ASR model that natively understands live, mixed forms of spoken language. This makes the new model not just another technological product, but a contribution to the formation of a local artificial intelligence ecosystem and the technological sovereignty of Kazakhstan,” noted Rashid Ismailov, CTO of Cybernet AI.
The new ASR model is targeted at businesses that handle large volumes of voice communications: banks and financial institutions, telecom operators, contact and call centers, logistics and service companies, and government agencies providing services to citizens.
This AI project is another step toward the growing economic and cultural integration of Turkic-speaking countries within the Organization of Turkic States (OTS). Founded in 2009, the OTS comprises Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Hungary and Northern Cyprus participate as observer states.
