AI bot for TBC Bank marketing campaign

Innowise built a bilingual Telegram bot that generates AI selfies with TBC Bank’s football-star brand ambassador. The bot helped turn the marketing campaign into a viral, self-sustaining acquisition channel.

3,000

users engaged in the campaign

2

languages supported

Industry Banking

Employees 4,100+

Region Uzbekistan

Services AI development

Client since 2026

Client overview

Summarize article with AI

TBC Bank Uzbekistan (TBC UZ) is Uzbekistan’s first digital bank that has been operating since 2020. It’s part of TBC Bank Group, a financial group listed on the London Stock Exchange whose home market is Georgia. The bank serves customers through its digital platform and offers retail banking services, cards, and other financial products through mobile channels.

Innowise LLC has proven to be a reliable and highly professional partner. We particularly appreciate the team's ability to respond swiftly to business requirements and strictly adhere to tight development deadlines.

M. Niyazmatova Head of the Marketing Department

Challenge

TBC Bank Uzbekistan partnered with its new brand ambassador, Eldor Shomurodov, captain of the Uzbekistan national football team, ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The bank wanted a campaign built around the partnership.
The marketing team was looking for organic reach: a campaign people would want to share on their own.
The launch window was tied to the World Cup calendar, so the timeframe was tight, and the deadline couldn’t be moved.

The original scope included video content featuring voice cloning and lip-sync of the ambassador, but developing it within a four-day timeframe wasn’t realistic.
The bot required a bilingual interface: Uzbek and Russian.
The image-generation pipeline had to hold up under thousands of requests during the traffic spike without a heavy infrastructure footprint behind it.

Accelerate your marketing with AI

Solution we delivered

We designed and built a bilingual Telegram bot that generates realistic AI selfies featuring the campaign’s football ambassador. The bot offers to select a language: Uzbek or Russian. No menu or setup step stands between the user and their photo.

We kept the user journey short: they open the bot, upload a personal photo, and receive a generated joint selfie with the ambassador, ready to download and share. The full flow takes 15-20 minutes with human approval before sending the result. Given the compressed timeline, the team made an early call to drop the originally proposed video and voice-cloning concept in favor of photo generation. This kept the project achievable without missing the World Cup launch window.

Bilingual, low-friction user flow

The bot opens with a language selection, then walks them through photo upload, generation, and download or sharing. The simplicity of the flow minimizes drop-off.

AI image generation

We used Google’s Gemini reasoning model to power the image-generation process. A user uploads a photo, and the bot places it into a prepared image featuring the footballer. The user gets a realistic selfie with the ambassador.

Custom admin panel

The client’s marketing team manages the campaign through a custom admin panel. They don’t need to rely on the development team for day-to-day operations.

Simple and scalable architecture

We made the flow lean. Though there’s no heavy backend, the bot can handle campaign traffic spikes.

Manual QA

Since there was no time for a formal QA process, our ML engineer tested generation quality, bot behavior, and edge-case photos manually. This was enough to catch issues before launch.

The brief sounded simpler than it was to execute. Our goal was to create an effortless user experience, yet meet the deadline tied to the World Cup calendar. This meant scrapping the idea of using video and switching to photo creation. After that, we needed to ensure that the bot could hold up under the traffic spike when the campaign launched.

Artsiom Kozak Head of AI Technical Expertise

Delivery approach

The project launch was timed to the start of the World Cup campaign. Every decision was based on that constraint. The team scoped down from the original video and voice-cloning concept to photo generation early enough to avoid the risk of missing the launch window.

There was no room for a formalized QA cycle. Testing was handled directly by the ML engineer throughout development. He checked generation quality, the bot’s behavior in Telegram, and how the pipeline handled different types of input photos.

Technologies & tools

Backend

Python

AI/ML

Google Gemini, reasoning tier, for image generation

Integration

Telegram Bot API

Hosting

Railway

QA

Manual testing

Team

AI/ML engineer

Results

Project duration

June 2026 – Ongoing

In the first two weeks, around 3,000 users generated selfies through the bot. This exceeded what TBC Bank had originally anticipated.
On the strength of that response, TBC Bank expanded the project’s scope by adding functionality that introduces users to the bank’s new payment card and other financial products within the same Telegram flow. So, a one-off promotional activation became an ongoing customer acquisition channel.
According to the client, the campaign generated a noticeable increase in interest in the bank’s products.
The client was pleased with the results of the partnership and chose Innowise for another project.

Accelerate your marketing with AI

Related cases

Contact us

Book a call or fill out the form below and we’ll get back to you once we’ve processed your request.

Name

Company

Phone

Message

Send us a voice message

Attach documents

Upload file

You can attach 1 file up to 2MB. Valid file formats: pdf, jpg, jpeg, png.

By clicking Send, you consent to Innowise processing your personal data per our Privacy Policy to provide you with relevant information. By submitting your phone number, you agree that we may contact you via voice calls, SMS, and messaging apps. Calling, message, and data rates may apply.

You can also send us your request
to contact@innowise.com

What happens next?

Once we’ve received and processed your request, we’ll get back to you to detail your project needs and sign an NDA to ensure confidentiality.

After examining your wants, needs, and expectations, our team will devise a project proposal with the scope of work, team size, time, and cost estimates.

We’ll arrange a meeting with you to discuss the offer and nail down the details.

Finally, we’ll sign a contract and start working on your project right away.