Ukrainian government taps ElevenLabs to power its ‘agentive state’ vision

On Friday at the IT Arena conference in Lviv — attended by Tech.eu — the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine announced that it has begun a partnership with ElevenLabs to help integrate voice interfaces into Ukrainian government services. 

According to Mykhailo Fedorov, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, the future belongs to agentive states:

“Ukraine is already moving toward a model where interaction with the government comes down to a single request, or even a voice message.”

The partnership will give Ukraine’s government services a humanlike voice and make them more accessible to everyone. 

“We have proven our ability to scale innovations, and this cooperation will accelerate the transition to a proactive, agentive state where AI truly simplifies citizens’ lives,” said Fedorov,.

Further, for the first time, ElevenLabs’ voice technology has been used to power the digital twin of Mykhailo Fedorov, which operates as a chatbot. The twin can recognise voice messages and respond in the same format.

“Together with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, we are giving digital services a clear human voice, starting with Minister Fedorov’s digital twin, and later expanding this to Diia and other tools.  Our goal is simple: to make government services in Ukraine faster and more accessible to everyone,” said Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs.  

Governments are experimenting with AI-enabled public interfaces

Ukraine’s announcement comes just a week after Albania introduced its own AI “minister” in parliament. 

Last week, an AI-generated government “minister” was introduced in the Albanian parliament, with Prime Minister Edi Rama presenting the bot as a means to help the government work more efficiently and with full transparency.

This is the first parliamentary speech of "Diella", AI minister of Albania.

I am constitutional-, says Diella, lecturing everybody regarding it's legality, questioned immideately after prime minister Rama introduced it(her).

In fact, the Constitution of Albania defines pic.twitter.com/mcH4P88eGw

— Skerdilajd Zaimi (@PublliusCS_a) September 18, 2025

It’s part of the country’s aim to gain European Union membership by 2030. 

ElevenLabs partnership to scale across Ukrainian government services

ElevenLabs’ voice technology will also be implemented across other government services. Planned steps include:

• Integrating AI voice features into the Diia portal and mobile app, allowing citizens to make requests and receive services by voice.
• Introducing voice functionality into educational platforms, including government education apps and initiatives.
• Adding voice tools to the Ministry’s internal systems, such as AI assistants for onboarding and HR teams.

Laying the infrastructure for technological sovereignty

Ukraine is rapidly setting new standards for digital nations of the future.

Last month, Ukraine officially launched its first state-level AI infrastructure, dubbed the AI Factory, designed to provide high-performance computing, data storage, software tools, and training ecosystems to underpin AI development across government, industry, and defence domains.  

Led by the Ministry of Digital Transformation and integrated with the WINWIN AI Centre of Excellence, this initiative aims to ensure that AI workloads, models, and data remain within Ukraine’s jurisdiction — a critical pillar of its push for technological sovereignty. 

Building a national LLM — without state budget funds

At the same time, Ukraine is developing a national large language model (LLM), trained on Ukrainian public data, scientific content, and official sources, with plans for open access after a testing phase. 

Partnering with Kyivstar, the government has structured oversight via coordination, technical, and ethics boards, to launch a scalable, high-quality model within about nine months — all without drawing on state budget funds. This effort is positioned as essential not only for public services and innovation, but also for defence and national security.