Alice's voice assistant from Yandex Company to each user of mobile devices and not only them. At the time of the appearance in 2017, he had some problems with speech and "modest" functionality, but today it is a convenient assistant with a mass of opportunities.
Voice Assistant From Yandex gave the name "Alice" - the developers claim that in honor of Alice Selesevoy, the heroine of Soviet films. Now Alice is already available to all owners of the Yandex browser, as well as it is installed in various "smart" devices.
Asking Voice Assistant Yandex and what it is better than existing assistants, you can find out by reading this article.
Why do Yandex need "Alice"?
In 2017, very eloquent statistics were collected (collected by SEO-Auditor), arguing that over 90% of domestic users were looking for information in one of 2 search engines - Google or Yandex. Mail.ru and Rambler systems remained pitiful crumbling attention of users, and the existence of Bing and Yahoo, many Russian users were not suspected at all.
Image: gs.seo-auditor.com.ru
At the same time, on the rating of SEO- Auditor It can be understood that Yandex, a significantly advanced Google in the middle of 2016, in 2017 was close to to give the "palm of championship". Why did Yandex become weaker? The answer is simple: because more and more people climbed the Internet from mobile devices, and less and less - with PC. Does many gadgets browser work by default with Yandex? No - any Android smartphone immediately enters Google.
In order to prevent monopoly on the Russian market of search engines and not lose Google, competition is thoughtful, Yandex tried to offer users something that did not give them the "overseas giant". This "something" and was supposed to become an explanatory voice assistant, understanding Russian. Google Assistant was good, but he has obvious problems with Russian; Google Now is very primitive compared to, say, C Siri and Alexa from Amazon. "Alice" was needed by Yandex to support popularity.
The Russian company managed to issue his voice assistant to the mass market earlier than Google Assistant spoke in Russian - and this is a significant victory.
In 2019, the company expanded success - all its own services, and there are many ( radio, Navigator, money and other) are tightly connected with Alice In addition, their own gadgets appeared, which also interact with the assistant. You can run any of these services with it, perform a number of actions and manage branded and third-party devices. At this capabilities of the assistant do not end.
When was the voice assistant "Alice"?
Yandex officially introduced "Alice" on October 10, 2017. To resort to its services can owners of all devices with iOS and Android, as well as users of equipment on Windows and other OS.
"Alice" recognizes well - moreover, it understands the user with a half-clow. According to Yandex, the assistant is trained on a huge array of texts, and therefore is a real erudite - it is able to recognize even unfinished issues, given the context of the above. Unlike the beta version, the official "Alice" does not have problems with intonation - she says to Tatyana Szitov's voice, actresses voicing Scarlett Johansson.
In Yandex, they like to attract stars to voice acting - the navigator of this company, for example, is able to speak by Rapper Basta's voice. And in 2019, especially for Yandex, the well-known musician Noize MC recorded an audio list, you can listen to the relevant request.
What is able to Assistant "Alice" from Yandex?
For the autumn 2019, the Voice Assistant "Alice" performs such functions:
- Puts routes, finds addresses User, reports traffic jams.
- Produces traditional search in the Yandex system and can quickly respond to popular questions, for example, "Who is John Snow?".
- gives weather forecasts and tell me what to dress before going outside.
- reports addresses of institutions - cafes, business centers, hostels.
- performs mathematical actions, converts currency.
- launches applications and opens the Internet pages, for example, Instagram, Vkontakte or the site of the State Service.
- Supports a dialogue, and sometimes even demonstrates erudition by quoting songs, dialogues from films or referring to books.
- It will help to manage the time - the alarm clock will turn on, the timer will create a reminder in the calendar.
- can play the game - "Find too much", "Ball of Fate", "what was before."The list is not exhausted by this, but you can find out what else is included on the request "Alice, let's play."
- It will help pass the time - sing a song, repeat the phrase after the user, translate and pronounce it in a foreign language, turn on a fairy tale, determine the song, turn on the music.
- Turns on devices connected to the smart home and allows them to be controlled.
- Will help you make the first and second order on the Beru service.
- Calls a specific number.
Yandex uses numerous resources to promote Alisa. So 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 have heard about “ Yandex. Station ” - this is a smart speaker with voice control. However, in addition to its own devices, Yandex has agreements with other brands. Alice supports smart speakers Elari Smartbeat, Irbis A, LG Xboom AI ThinQ WK7Y, can work with TV set-top box DEXP Smartbox, children's watch Elari KidPhone 3G and Bluetooth headphones Sony Ear Duo. The list of partners does not end there. It includes Samsung, Redmond, Xiaomi, Philips and many other famous brands (over 100 in total).
The developers did a great job to “humanize” “Alice” as much as possible - therefore, the voice assistant from Yandex is able to 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 funny in the extreme, 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 the voice and read "Alice's" answers.
How to install "Alice" on a smartphone?
You can download Alice to your smartphone by downloading and installing the official Yandex app from Google Play or the AppStore. You should launch the application and press the blue key with the image of a microphone, located exactly in the middle of the screen.
A chat window will appear, showing old requests and the answers given to them by "Alice". By clicking on the button with the microphone icon again, the user will be able to make a new voice request.
For those who have problems with the Alice voice assistant, Yandex has launched a separate page on Yandex. Help. Here, users can find out what to do if the assistant "hangs" or gives an Internet connection error.
Conclusion
According to statistics, 3.5 billion different devices with voice assistants were used in the world. According to experts, by 2021, the number of such devices may increase twice. Statistics believe that we are at the stage of becoming a powerful global brand - soon a company that did not give the world of the intellectual assistant created by the personally will be considered an outsider.
All major software developers have already acquired by voice assistants who work in varying degrees effectively: for example, Apple pleases their fans "Melnica" Siri, and Samsung, on the contrary, grieves users BIXBY. Yandex also did not remain aside - her assistant "Alice" from the point of view of functionality is becoming better, and it is really comfortable to use it and interesting.
