From Yandex they gave the name “Alice” - the developers claim that in honor of Alisa Selezneva, the heroine of Soviet films. Now “Alice” is already available to all owners of the Yandex browser, and it is also installed in various “smart” devices.

In 2017, very eloquent statistics were collected (collected by the SEO-Auditor portal), stating that over 90% of domestic users were looking for information in one of 2 search engines– Google or Yandex. The Mail.ru and Rambler systems were left with pitiful crumbs of user attention, and many Russian users were not even aware of the existence of Bing and Yahoo.

At the same time, according to the SEO-Auditor rating, it can be understood that Yandex, which was significantly ahead of Google in mid-2016, was close to giving the “palm of championship” in 2017. Why did Yandex become weaker? The answer is simple: because more and more people went online with mobile devices, and less and less - from a PC. How many gadgets have the default browser with Yandex? No - any Android smartphone immediately goes to Google.

In order to prevent a monopoly on the Russian search engine market and not lose outright to Google, Yandex tried to offer users something that the “overseas giant” did not give them back then. This “something” was supposed to be an intelligent voice assistant that understands Russian. Google Assistant was good, but it has obvious problems with Russian; Google Now is quite primitive compared to, say, Amazon's Alexa. Yandex needed “Alice” to maintain its popularity.

The Russian company managed to release its voice assistant to the mass market before Google Assistant spoke Russian - and this is a significant victory.

In 2019, the company expanded its success - all its own services, and there are many of them (Radio, Navigator, Money and others) are tightly connected with Alice, in addition, they have their own gadgets that also interact with the assistant. With it you can launch any of these services, perform a number of actions and manage branded and third party devices. The assistant's capabilities don't end there.

When was the Alice voice assistant released?

Yandex officially introduced “Alice” on October 10, 2017. Owners of all devices with iOS and Android, as well as users of Windows and other OS devices can resort to its services.

"Alice" recognizes speech well - moreover, it understands the user perfectly. According to Yandex, the assistant is trained on a huge array of texts, and therefore is a real erudite - she is able to recognize even unfinished questions, taking into account the context of what was said earlier. Unlike the beta version, the official "Alice" has no problems with intonation - she speaks in the voice of Tatyana Shitova, the actress who voices Scarlett Johansson.

Yandex likes to involve stars in the voice acting of services - the navigator of this company, for example, is able to speak in the voice of rapper Basta. And in 2019, the famous musician Noize MC recorded an audio tale especially for Yandex; you can listen to it upon request.

What can the Alice assistant from Yandex do?

• Plots routes, finds addresses, the user’s position, and reports traffic jams.
• Performs a traditional search in the Yandex system and can quickly answer popular questions, for example, “Who is Jon Snow?”
• Gives weather forecasts and tells you what to wear before going outside.
• Provides addresses of establishments - cafes, business centers, hostels.
• Performs mathematical operations, converts currencies.
• Launches applications and opens pages on the Internet, for example, Instagram, VKontakte or the State Services website.
• Maintains dialogue, and sometimes even demonstrates erudition by quoting songs, dialogues from films, or referring to books.
• It will help you manage your time - it will turn on an alarm, a timer, and create a reminder in your calendar.
• Can play the game “Find the odd one out”, “Ball of Fate”, “What happened before”. The list is not limited to this, and you can find out what else is included by asking “Alice, let’s play.”
• It will help pass the time - it will sing a song, repeat a phrase after the user, translate and pronounce it in a foreign language, play a fairy tale, identify a song, play music.
• It will turn on devices connected to the smart home and allow you to control them.
• It will help you make your first and repeat orders on the service.
• Will call a specific number.

To promote Alice, Yandex uses numerous resources. Thus, the voice assistant is tightly integrated into the company’s proprietary applications - Taxi, Radio, Navigator and others.

Not without support for smart home systems. Many people have heard about “” - this is with voice control. However, in addition to its own devices, Yandex also has agreements with other brands. “Alice” supports smart speakers Elari Smartbeat, Irbis A, Xboom AI ThinQ WK7Y, can work with Smartbox TV set-top box, Elari KidPhone 3G children's watch and Ear Duo Bluetooth headphones. The list of partners does not end there. It includes, Redmond, and a lot of other famous brands (more than 100 in total).

The developers did a great job to “humanize” “Alice” as much as possible - so the voice assistant from Yandex is capable of humor no worse than Siri, some of whose pearls have become popular memes. Here's how "Alice" explains why she's called that:

“Alice’s” answers are really extremely funny, and the assistant’s voice sounds quite natural (much better than in the beta version) - thanks to machine learning technologies, gluing is almost invisible. Those who are annoyed by small “speech defects” can turn off Alice’s voice and read the answers.

How to install Alice on a smartphone?

You can download Alice to your smartphone by downloading and installing the official Yandex application from Google Play or AppStore. You should launch the application and press the blue button with the image of a microphone located exactly in the middle of the screen.

A correspondence window will appear, where old requests and answers given to them by “Alice” will be displayed. By clicking on the button with the microphone icon again, the user will be able to make a new voice request.

Conclusion

According to statistics, already in 2016, 3.5 billion various devices with voice assistants. According to experts, by 2021 the number of such devices may double. Statistics convince us that we are at the stage of formation of a powerful global brand - soon a company that has not given the world an intelligent assistant created by itself will be considered an outsider.

All major software developers have already acquired voice assistants that work to varying degrees effectively: for example, Apple delights its fans with the “clever” Siri, while Samsung, on the contrary, upsets users. Yandex also did not stand aside - its assistant “Alice” is becoming better and better in terms of functionality, and it is really convenient and interesting to use.

Alice is a free voice assistant for simplifying everyday tasks from your phone: searching for an organization, getting directions, searching for information on the Internet, and much more. The application is a direct competitor to Google OK and Siri services.

Alice will answer any user questions (those for which she does not know the answer - she studies and searches on the Internet), and will also help to get home by building a route for drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, or paving the way on public transport.

Alice was developed by Yandex and is accordingly synchronized with all the company’s services: maps, navigation, weather, movie posters, browser, etc.

The assistant is convenient when it is not possible to enter data into the phone, for example, at -40, you can type on your smartphone which bus is going to a certain stop - just call it with the command “Listen, Alice!” and ask for the bus number. In the case of searching for a store or cinema, the procedure is similar: the voice assistant will find everything that is on the map.

• determine the caller's phone number: what region and city, mobile operator, organization of 5 million and other parameters;
• provide weather forecasts accurate to the area, report the latest news, notify about important messages;
• lay out routes: for cars, cyclists, pedestrians and call a taxi;
• find any places nearby: pharmacies, shops, cinemas, theaters, parks, etc.;
• just chat about life and even play.

It’s easy to download, install and use the Alice application on Android - first of all, you need to download APK file or through the Google store using the links below. Then install it as a normal program and run it. That's it! Now the assistant is on your Android phone.

Take out the phone, bring it to your mouth and say: “Listen, Alice!” or “Hello, Alice!”, to which the assistant will respond and help you find information or quickly give you an answer.

You can download the program either separately or in combination with any service. For example, the assistant can be activated in Navigator or installed as a separate Yandex application.

To activate the assistant in the browser, just click on Menu - Settings - Voice capabilities - enable.

For all other cases, links are available below where you can download Alice voice assistant in Russian for free for Android devices (smartphones and tablets).

Add to calendar 07/30/2019 18:30 07/30/2019 21:00 Europe/Moscow Alice, let's chat about testing St. Petersburg, Piskarevsky prospect, 2k2Shch, Yandex office, 5th floor

Alice, let's chat about testing

Program

• Participants

On July 30, the St. Petersburg office of Yandex will host the event “Alice, let’s chat about testing.”
It's 2019, we are surrounded by voice assistants - including Alice from Yandex. Alice is available in various services and smart devices - not only in speakers. The meeting will allow you to learn about the entire ecosystem around the voice assistant, about smart home and solutions from other companies. Central topic: testing of such systems, its features and main challenges. In between reports, you will be able to chat with speakers and other developers from the Alice team.

Registration is required. We will offer all invitees to complete the task of testing the assistant - the winners will receive smart speakers from us.

High technologies are developing at a rapid pace and every day necessary and attractive new products appear on the market of digital goods and services. Voice assistant Alice from Yandex is a real breakthrough in computer networks.

Our article today will be about this amazing brainchild of programmers. We tried to consider all the innovations in technology and descriptions of functionality, and many other important points in this material.

The history of the creation and launch of Alice

So, let’s meet: Alice, a voice assistant from Yandex. This application manages to successfully simulate live conversational speech (both oral and written), give advice and answers to questions posed by reproducing them by voice or writing on the screen. The creators of this miracle confidently declare this program as the most advanced digital assistant, which has an unlimited number of response phrases, which pleasantly distinguishes it from other analogues in the Internet space.

You can even just chat with a virtual young lady. Type the command “Alice, let’s chat” and enjoy communicating with the computer mind. This has become a new entertainment for numerous visitors social networks, where they post snippets of particularly funny dialogue.

Not so long ago - in the spring of 2017 - a beta version of the speech assistant of the Yandex search engine appeared. After all the testing and improvements, the service was officially launched in October of the same year. V.V. also communicated with this voice assistant. Putin, when he visited the Yandex office.

How the testing went

The creation of a virtual voice application is associated with the idea of ​​​​implementing advanced assistance functions for users to search for the necessary information on the Internet. Ideally, the assistant should understand verbal commands and respond to them accurately.

The development of technologies underlying such services is not characterized by maximum perfection. But even the level at which they are currently able to impress with their functionality.
Alice, Yandex's voice assistant, is capable of communicating in a question-answer format. And at the same time, she finds the answer to many questions in the same Yandex.

Using a huge number of phrases selected from search queries in Yandex, this voice assistant gives the impression of artificial intelligence.

What principles and technologies is the program based on?

Today, this application has been implemented everywhere, which allows it to be used by all owners of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets. And now the voice assistant in Russian “Alice” has significantly expanded the boundaries of its use.
The program uses some audio parameters as the main algorithms for human speech recognition. For example, the frequency and length of sound waves (or a single sound wave) at a certain point in time are recognized and recorded.

Based on artificial intelligence and using neural connection technologies, Alice fits perfectly into the company of other services from Yandex. The neural networks that are included in the voice assistant’s technology platform are trained by interacting with users. This is what became the basis for the “advancement” of the new assistant in modern youth slang. Additionally, when creating this brainchild of science, the technology of machine learning and building neural connections was actively used.

Where and how to enable voice assistant Alice

To start using this application you need:
Download the application for your computer or laptop

For smartphone downloaded at Google services Play or AppStore.
To install, run the downloaded distribution.
After this, you need to click on the blue button next to the microphone icon.


By speaking requests into the microphone, the user will receive a voice response from Alice and also responses in text format. If the program does not have an answer, it smoothly redirects the user to the relevant Yandex page.
When the application is installed, the following picture will appear on the device screen:


The welcome phrase “Hello, I’m Alice, your voice assistant” indicates that the application is ready to start working. Then we press the microphone and voice our question. We advise you to pronounce phrases clearly and not “swallow” sounds. Otherwise, the program may misinterpret the question and, accordingly, give an answer that is not entirely relevant.
To call a new assistant, use the panel that appears at the bottom of the screen.

When using the assistant on personal computer Additionally, it becomes possible to configure the basic parameters of the program. Right-click on the voice assistant panel. You are in the program settings. Now install all the features of Alice for yourself for ease of use.

Thanks to artificial intelligence "Alice" perfectly recognizes natural speech (both oral and written). You can chat with her on various topics. Answers to questions are spoken out loud by the program and also displayed on the screen. You can download Yandex Alice for free for your computer or phone using the direct links below, where they are located latest versions programs.

System Requirements for computer

• System: Windows 10, Windows 8 (8.1) or Windows 7 with x86/x64 architecture support.

• System: Android 5.0 and above | iOS 9.0 and higher.

• PThe stability of the program has been improved.