A Sofia-based engineering team cracked the AI compliance puzzle, creating a multilingual AI-powered sales coaching platform that satisfies GDPR and EU AI Act requirements simultaneously.
Generic Soft’s solution comes as European companies face a harsh reality: popular US-built tools often fail to pass GDPR data retention requirements and EU AI Act transparency mandates.
Earlier this year, Italy’s data protection authority fined Luka Inc. (Replika) €5 million in March 2025 for GDPR violations including insufficient transparency and failure to protect minors, while OpenAI faced a €15 million fine in December 2024 for transparency failures, lacking legal basis for training data, and inadequate age verification.
Where major AI vendors stumbled on compliance, Mariyan Iliev, Stefan Vadev, and Pavel Paunov’s team succeeded, delivering a working solution for Face2Face, a Nordic field marketing company that needed AI-powered coaching for high-volume door-to-door campaigns without the regulatory risks that had derailed their previous vendor.
Face2Face with GDPR
Face2Face Design & Communication, a Nordic sales and field-marketing company, needed a custom software solution to help them with ramping up their employees in an effective way.
They operate high-volume door-to-door and in-store campaigns across multiple Nordic markets, with promoters using iPads and phones. They needed an AI-powered sales assistant that could:
- Transcribe meeting audio reliably on mobile devices with strong non-English support
- Analyze conversations against both standard and campaign-specific compliance rules
- Provide a path toward real-time objection handling and guidance
- Meet GDPR requirements with tight control over data retention and vendor agreements
- Navigate EU AI Act constraints on employee evaluation systems
The technical challenges were equally demanding: Safari’s restrictive security model for browser-based recording, speaker diarization limitations, and the architecture trade-offs between on-device versus streaming transcription.
This basically meant handling extremely sensitive biometric speech data, transcribing English, German, and Nordic languages with under 12 percent word-error, and generating coaching insights that complied with both GDPR and the EU AI Act’s ban on automated employee evaluation.
Generic Soft delivered a complex solution that integrated compliance as a core technical requirement rather than a legal afterthought. They negotiated EU-standard Data Processing Agreements with transcription provider DeepGram and OpenAI, built a progressive-web-app recorder that sidestepped Safari’s audio-capture limits, and embedded privacy features (automated deletion schedules, granular consent management, role-based access) directly into the code.
They made sure that every AI recommendation carries a traceable audit trail, allowing managers and regulators to see exactly which rule was fired and why.
The result was a trustworthy AI-powered mobile coach that serves both employee development and organizational insight. Field sales teams gain a supportive training companion that provides real-time coaching during customer interactions, helping them improve objection handling and conversation flow. Managers receive aggregated performance insights and training recommendations that respect individual privacy while identifying successful techniques and areas for improvement across campaigns.
The app achieved regulatory approval on the first attempt.
The need for boutique software services
This single project is part of a wider market shift. Across Europe, the demand for software built with privacy-by-design and governance-first principles is soaring, driven by mounting regulatory enforcement.
Global software consulting is projected to nearly double to USD 700 billion by 2030, while the responsible-AI market is on track to surge from under USD 1 billion in 2024 to more than USD 47 billion within a decade.
Yet, PwC reports only 11% of organizations have fully implemented responsible-AI foundations.
European companies discover that major vendors’ solutions crumble under regulations, driving demand for boutique partners.
“When we started Generic Soft, we saw that many companies building software could technically deliver features, but few combined deep engineering discipline, reliability, and flexible collaboration in a way that scales without breaking the budget or timeline. We wanted to fill that sweet spot between boutique agility and enterprise-level quality.” Stefan Vadev, CTO of Generic Soft shares.
This philosophy has guided Generic Soft’s approach across Healthcare, Fintech, and Software sectors, delivering everything from algorithmic trading platforms developed with professional stock traders to GDPR-compliant asset management systems and AI-powered agricultural robotics. Every project receives the same rigorous engineering standards: well-designed, testable, efficient code delivered through agile processes that optimize features per sprint.
Nick Todorov, CEO of LimeChain, notes: “Generic Soft has been one of the few companies that were able to successfully and consistently provide services on the highest level.”
Their leadership team has trained over 400 engineers in software development best practices, establishing proven methods that transfer directly to client projects.
Bulgaria’s software engineering advantage
Much of the credit goes to legacy computer science knowledge and senior talent. Bulgaria’s engineering workforce is often seen as a cost-saving play, but Stefan argues it’s a quality play:
“What clients might not realize is that Bulgarian engineers don’t just offer cost savings — we have very strong STEM education, excellent multilingual skills, and a culture of continuous learning and adaptability, which means less ramp-up time and fewer communication friction points,” he said.
This advantage originates from Bulgaria’s unique tech legacy. Since the 1960s, Bulgaria invested heavily in electronics and software industries while promoting equal access to technical education, creating a long-standing culture of technological expertise that continues today.
The country now produces thousands of engineering and IT graduates annually, with about 70% of Bulgarian ICT companies focusing exclusively on exports, making Bulgaria a top outsourcing destination in Europe.
The next wave: AI operations
While early AI adoption focused on proof-of-concept demonstrations, European companies now require production-ready systems with enterprise-grade reliability, regulatory compliance, and operational monitoring.
“I see the next wave of demand centering on operationalizing AI (AI Ops)—not just building models, but safely deploying, monitoring, and governing them in production, alongside expanded cybersecurity focus (especially around AI, identity, and data protection). There’ll also be growing demand for observability, privacy engineering, and resilient infrastructure.” Stefan shares.
The Face2Face project exemplifies this trend: we live in times when it’s enough to build AI models that work in isolation, teams now need systems that handle multilingual transcription, GDPR compliance, real-time analysis, and audit trails across the entire technology stack.
As AI systems become more complex and regulated, these operational capabilities become as important as the underlying models themselves.
