diff --git a/recipes/conversational_voice_agent/convert_and_optimize_asr.py b/recipes/conversational_voice_agent/convert_and_optimize_asr.py
index add5d07ad22..0b2b6c49280 100644
--- a/recipes/conversational_voice_agent/convert_and_optimize_asr.py
+++ b/recipes/conversational_voice_agent/convert_and_optimize_asr.py
@@ -1,29 +1,38 @@
 import argparse
 from pathlib import Path
 
+import openvino as ov
 from optimum.intel.openvino import OVModelForSpeechSeq2Seq
 from transformers import AutoProcessor
 
-MODEL_NAME = "distil-whisper/distil-large-v2"
 
+MODEL_NAME = "distil-whisper/distil-large-v2"
 
-def convert_asr_model(model_dir: Path) -> Path:
+def convert_asr_model(use_quantization:bool, model_dir: Path) -> Path:
     """
     Convert speech-to-text model
 
     Params:
+        use_quantization: whether quantize weights to INT8
         model_dir: dir to export model
     Returns:
        Path to exported model dir
     """
-    output_dir = model_dir / (MODEL_NAME.rsplit ("/")[-1] + "-FP16")
 
     # load model and convert it to OpenVINO
-    model = OVModelForSpeechSeq2Seq.from_pretrained(MODEL_NAME, export=True, compile=False)
-    # change precision to FP16
-    model.half()
-    # save model to disk
-    model.save_pretrained(output_dir)
+    output_dir = model_dir / (MODEL_NAME.rsplit ("/")[-1] + "-FP16")
+
+    ov_model = OVModelForSpeechSeq2Seq.from_pretrained(MODEL_NAME, export=True, compile=False, load_in_8bit=False)
+    ov_model.half()
+    ov_model.save_pretrained(output_dir)
+
+    if use_quantization: 
+        # Use Optimum-Intel to directly quantize weights of the ASR model into INT8
+
+        quantized_distil_model_path = model_dir / (MODEL_NAME.rsplit ("/")[-1] + "-INT8")
+        quantized_ov_model = OVModelForSpeechSeq2Seq.from_pretrained(MODEL_NAME, export=True, compile=False, load_in_8bit=True)
+        quantized_ov_model.save_pretrained(quantized_distil_model_path)
+        output_dir = quantized_distil_model_path
 
     # export also processor
     asr_processor = AutoProcessor.from_pretrained(MODEL_NAME)
@@ -34,7 +43,8 @@ def convert_asr_model(model_dir: Path) -> Path:
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
     parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
+    parser.add_argument("--use_quantization", default=True, help="Choose if to quantize the ASR model")
     parser.add_argument("--model_dir", type=str, default="model", help="Directory to place the model in")
-
     args = parser.parse_args()
-    convert_asr_model(Path(args.model_dir))
\ No newline at end of file
+
+    convert_asr_model(args.use_quantization, Path(args.model_dir))