Ukrainian residents can now speak to its government portal Diia.AI

The Ukrainian government believes that interacting with the state should be as simple as just chatting with someone to get your requests met. 

The voice feature was launched on Diia.AI, which was said to be the world's AI agent embedded on a government platform. 

Now, through a simple conversation via text, voice or a mix of both, citizens can use Diia.AI to check which public services they're eligible for, access personal records such as insurance or work contributions, and request official documents such as income certificates. 

"We've taught the AI on the Diia portal to communicate by voice.  

"There's no longer any need to type long questions: just say your request aloud and instantly hear the answer," stated the official release from the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine (and translated from Ukrainian to English with AI). 

How it works 

On Diia's homepage or within an existing chat, users can tap on the sound wave button and ask their questions.  

The voice feature is only activated when the user explicitly enables it in the setting.  

Diia.AI then processes the voice request, responds aloud while concurrently displaying the text response on the user's screen.  

"To make conversations feel more natural, we've also added an interactive sound wave animation that responds to your voice and intonation," stated in the official release.  

The chat history is saved, which allows the user to return and not lose important details.  

As more government registries are integrated, this would allow Diia.AI to move beyond single services to handle complex life-event scenarios and end-to-end administrative processes. 

The foundations which it was built upon 

The AI voice agent in the Diia portal was made possible through a partnership established since last September between the Ministry and ElevenLabs, a voice AI technology startup. 

The first prototype co-developed back then was the voice of the digital twin of the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, which operates as a chatbot. 

Besides Diia.AI, the government is also looking to integrate AI voice agents into Mriia (educational app for students, parents, and teachers), Diia.Education (national platform for digital skills), as well as the Ministry's internal HR tools. 

While ElevenLabs powers the AI voice features, Kitsoft develops the overarching digital architecture of the Diia platform. 

According to Kitsoft's official statement, the Ukrainian govtech company created microphone and permission workflows, a seamless voice and text interaction within a single conversation, and integrated the conversational interface with Diia services. 

The agentic AI function of Diia.AI was also enabled through a low-code platform built by Kitsoft.  

“Because each of our services is low code and stored in a standardised way, it’s clear what is the input of the service,” says Kitsoft's CEO, Oleksandr Iefremov, to GovInsider, previously on how the government's decision to pivot to a low-code architecture has allowed its AI to transition from a simple chatbot to an agent. 

The Diia ecosystem is currently accessed by over 23 million users. 

The Ministry highlighted that the AI voice agent is still being continuously trained and after each response, and that users can rate it with a thumbs up or thumbs down and leave a comment for the developers.

You can click here to read other stories about Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation.