Test drive of the voice assistant “Alice” from Yandex. Voice assistant Alice: download for Android Yandex voice assistant Alice download for Android

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Yandex Alice is a virtual voice assistant created by Russian developers. Applications of this type are designed to analyze user commands in order to further perform the required task. For example, with the phrase “turn on the music” you can activate Yandex melodies without performing any actions with your smartphone. You can download Alice Yandex to your computer on our website.

Description:

Technologies that allow remote user commands to be executed are far from perfect. An example is the well-known voice assistant Siri, which is also adapted to the conditions of operation with Russian-speaking users.

Alice is the result of the activities of the Russian Yandex team. The resource is positioned in Russia, which makes it possible to support the Russian language in the application, taking into account the needs of users. The assistant's voice has a distinct flavor of artificial intelligence. Alice's speech is dubbed by Tatyana Shitova, who previously “spoke” with the voice of a computer in the famous film “She.”

Peculiarities:

The key difference between the assistant and Yandex is that Alice not only recognizes speech, constructs logical phrases, expressions and sentences, but also tries to interpret them. In this sense, virtual intelligence has no analogues. If a person made a request and then began to develop the topic in the appropriate context (clarifying details), then with an 80% probability Alice will understand what the user is talking about and offer an adequate solution to the problem. You can download Alice Yandex on PC from our portal.

In terms of speech recognition, Alice is an order of magnitude more advanced than its analogues. Errors do occur, but they are due to imprecise language or pronounced dialect. The creators of the personal Alice focused on the adaptability of their development. First of all, Alice will open the Yandex Music menu at the request “play song”. If you need to translate any phrase, then the first open link is “Yandex. Translator". Alice can also be installed on iOS and Android platforms. However, in this case, stability is not guaranteed. Problems can be caused by issuing the command “open alarm clock” or “save note”. In such cases, there may be no reaction.

The developers claim that the virtual assistant can easily open applications that users already have installed. There are no problems with the “open VKontakte” command. You can download the Yandex Alice voice assistant from our website. However, when activating the “open Viber” function, Alice directs the user to the site, rather than launching it.

Advantages and disadvantages:

Main advantages:

Integration with Yandex services. You can always play music, video or translate text in a matter of seconds using the appropriate commands.
Adaptation to the Russian language. The assistant understands speech perfectly. Teams open quickly. Like any other artificial intelligence, there are errors, but they are not critical.

Flaws:

As for the disadvantages, they are presented:

Difficulty in launching a number of standard programs. For example, you cannot be sure that a program will open a “calculator” or “set an alarm” for the time specified by a person.
Low level of interaction with other platforms (Android, iOS).

How to install Yandex Alice on a PC or laptop?

To do this, you need to perform a number of actions:

Download the software. Bluestacks allows you to work with programs that are available on the Andoriod operating system by installing them on your PC.
The user is asked to log in or register in the system.
After launching, enter the request in the emulator’s search bar: “download Alice Yandex for Windows.”
You can test the capabilities of virtual intelligence by activating the shortcut on your desktop.

Siri. This voice assistant is integrated into devices running on the iOS operating system. The peculiarity is that in this case there is deep integration with the OS functionality. You can activate artificial intelligence even if your smartphone is locked. Work with user commands is carried out instantly.
Dusya. A mobile assistant that allows you to execute many user commands. The key difference between this system and Siri or Alice is that the program runs in the background. It does not take up space on the screen, but is activated by shaking, voice, and a number of other methods. This is not a chatbot that will communicate with the user. The developers are positioning their project from the point of view of an effective assistant who can dial a number from a notebook, send a text message, or search for music from social networks.

Results and comments:

Yandex Alice is a virtual assistant that simplifies the procedure for working with the operating system. Alice will execute many user commands instantly. Sometimes it is necessary to wait or clarify the request. The program perfectly understands Russian speech and allows users to launch applications and games already installed by users. You can download Alice Yandex to your computer from our portal.

Hello Alice.

It becomes easier to get answers to many questions when you have the Alice voice assistant from Yandex at hand. Alice Yandex is a personal assistant with artificial intelligence, developed by Yandex, an alternative to its competitor Okay Google. Alice easily helps you cope with everyday tasks and conducts meaningful dialogue. The program is created on the basis of neural networks that recognize speech, accents in the voice, create responses and synthesize the assistant’s voice. Thanks to such skills, Alice is able to improvise and communicate in a spoken language accessible to everyone. With each subsequent update of the voice assistant, the program gains new capabilities, and now in addition to performing search queries

Alice can:

This is not the entire list of her capabilities; she is constantly learning new skills and improving herself.

If you are bored or sad, she will joke, tell an anecdote or play with you. Would you like to watch a movie? Easy - movie posters, tickets and prices in a jiffy. Alice can play a fairy tale for children. Her answers will always be varied; the creators of the application worked for a long time and were able to put modern live speech into the voice assistant, which will be understandable to many.

Russian actress Tatyana Shitova participated in creating the voice. She previously voiced American actress Scarlett Johansson. Coincidence or not, but the voice of Tatyana Shilova in the science fiction film She spoke to the virtual assistant Samantha. Thanks to this voice acting, Alice turned out to be very alive. Her intonations reveal sadness, joy and even insolence.

The creators explained why they decided to focus on the virtual assistant. First, the industry is moving towards voice messaging as today's generation of users prefer voice search over typing. Secondly, building algorithms on meaningful dialogues. That is, the virtual assistant understands that subsequent phrases may be interrelated. This is what the dialogue is based on. The Yandex Alice voice assistant is now built in by default, making the browser much more convenient.

Video review of Yandex Alice

How to install Alice Yandex

1. Download the Alice application from the link below.
2. Install the application.
2. Allow the application to determine geolocation.
3. For full operation, allow to record sound.
4. For ease of use, you can add a widget or shortcut to the home screen.

If you are interested in how to install and use the Alice voice assistant from Yandex, then you are in the right place, and in this article I will talk about it. They say the future has already arrived. Voice assistants and self-learning computer systems, previously existing only in the works of science fiction writers, are gradually becoming an integral part of our lives. The recently released “Alice” from Yandex will help in obtaining the information we need (weather, convenient route, exchange rates, etc.). And the use of neural networks in its functionality will make it possible to recognize even fragments of words spoken by a person.

Voice assistant "Alice" from Yandex - first acquaintance

Surely many users are familiar firsthand with the popular voice assistants “Siri” (Apple), “Google Assistant” (Google), “Bixby” (Samsung), “Cortana” (Microsoft), “Alexa” (Amazon). All of them are able to distinguish human speech by performing a basic set of user commands (providing the required information, launching applications, switching the device to one mode or another, and so on). At the same time, the vast majority of them do not always accurately recognize Russian speech (and some are not familiar with the Russian language at all), since they are focused primarily on the English-speaking consumer.

The development of the Yandex company called “Alice” is designed to eliminate the mentioned drawback. The assistant has close integration with Yandex services and recognizes the Russian language well (according to the “WER” metric, the quality of speech recognition is close to human). Using neural network technology allows “Alice” to work well with intonation and understand even fragments of words spoken by a person.

"Alice" - a high-quality development by Yandex

“Alice” is available for installation both as a beta program for Windows OS and as a mobile application for Android and iOS OS.

What can Alice do?

Thanks to integration with Yandex services, when using the application, Alice will tell you about the weather, build the optimal route to, list eateries close to you, delight you with an anecdote, launch the desired music track, as well as the required application (Vkontakte, Skype, etc.) . “Alice” is also good at mathematics, makes calculations, and is well acquainted with exchange rates.

At the same time, her capabilities allow her to maintain a relaxed third-party dialogue, communicating in the context of a topic (although it would be fair to note that she does not always understand the context).

Sometimes dialogues with “Alice” look quite funny

The disadvantages of the application include the inability to work with an alarm clock, call an ambulance, or perform other similar actions available, for example, with Siri.

Where to download the Alice program

You can find out everything about the version from our article, and also download the mobile version of the assistant as part of the official Yandex application on the Android OS (versions 4.3 and higher) and iOS (versions 8.1 and higher).

How to use Alice on a computer

After installing the program, the assistant will appear as a search bar in the taskbar on the left.

To activate the assistant, say any of the phrases “Hello, Alice,” “Okay, Alice,” “Listen, Alice.” The program also responds well to the phrases “Hello, Yandex”, “Listen, Yandex”, “Okay, Yandex”.

After pronouncing the introductory phrase, the assistant panel will open, after which you will need to ask the required question (command).

It would also be a good idea to ask “What can you do?” in order to get a basic understanding of the application’s capabilities.

By hovering the cursor over the assistant panel and pressing the right mouse button, you can enter the settings mode. Here you can enable or disable voice activation using the phrases listed above, activate or deactivate voice responses, specify hotkeys for launching Alice, decide on its appearance (line mode or icon), and also select the default browser.

How to launch a voice assistant on Android and iOS

Working with Alice on mobile devices is not significantly different from the version of the assistant on a PC. You need to install the official Alice application from Yandex on your gadget, launch it, and then click on the button with the image of a microphone in the center. After this, “Alice” will be activated, and you will be able to use it and ask the questions you need.

At the same time, “Alice” cannot be called when the screen is off or from the desktop. To launch and operate it, you must activate the official Yandex application.

Conclusion

The launch of Alice will help Yandex compete with Google, which has been using its own voice tools for working with user search queries for a long time. At the same time, the focus of “Alice” on the Russian-speaking audience, high-quality Russian speech, the use of neural networks and other bonuses guarantee “Alice” great popularity in the near future. All that's left to do is wait.

Friends, in October it will be 3 years since the official release of Windows 10, and the voice assistant Cortana integrated into the operating system still will not learn to speak Russian. Until now, a full-time virtual assistant is available only for 15 countries of the world, which do not include the states of the post-Soviet space. Fortunately, a response to Western IT developments is ripe in Russia. Now, guys, we have a domestic voice assistant that can be embedded not only in mobile devices, but also in Windows computers, and her name is Alice. Well, friends, let's get to know her.

“Okay, Yandex” instead of Cortana

The first Runet search engine, Yandex, set out to solve the Cortana problem 2 years ago and offered the Russian-speaking audience a free utility, Yandex.Strok, which integrates an analogue of Cortana into the Windows taskbar - a search engine with the ability to enter voice commands. Yandex.String was created primarily to support Yandex services. Its capabilities included in-wall search, Internet search, and getting answers to simple questions like weather or converting values directly in the search bar. The utility could be activated by voice request “Listen, Yandex” or “Okay, Yandex”.

Yandex.Strok did not make a particular impression on the Russian-speaking audience, and its creators came to the conclusion that the problem lies in the facelessness of the voice assistant. After analyzing the errors, Yandex recently brought the utility to a new format: it has improved functionality and a virtual character named Alice has appeared. The updated Yandex.String itself was renamed, calling it simply and unpretentiously - “Voice Assistant for Windows.” Alice is available not only for Windows, but also for mobile devices based on iOS and Android. Soon it is planned to introduce Alice into Yandex.Browser and other products of the first Runet search engine.

How Alice works

Alice is embedded in the Windows taskbar and replaces the standard in-system search. When you click on the search bar in the taskbar after implementing the utility, you will see a selection of icons of favorite sites extracted from the browser history, popular search queries, as well as buttons for interacting with Alice.

You can activate the virtual assistant by clicking on the microphone icon, as well as phrases - both old ones that were used for Yandex.Strings and new ones - “Okay, Alice”, “Hello, Alice”, “Listen, Alice”. A button with a question mark will display help information about its capabilities.

Like the regular in-system search of Windows 10, the search tool from Yandex is structured by sections. In the section below we will find some analogue of the Start menu with a selection of standard Windows programs.

And in the last section we will get access to the user profile folders.

Well, now about the essence - what is Alice capable of? The Yandex voice assistant can:

Visit famous sites;

Run some Windows programs;

Open the requested music on the Yandex.Music and Yandex.Radio services;

Provide answers to precise questions directly in the chat based on the capabilities of the Yandex smart line;

Turn off, restart and put the computer to sleep;

Provide weather, time, date, news, converted money and other values, information about city traffic jams and public institutions directly in the chat;

Get directions;

Generate search queries and redirect them to the browser.

Of course, a serious conversation with Alice will not work.

With any advantage in her capabilities, the virtual assistant will immediately send us to a web search engine. She still doesn’t know how to do a lot of things that Cortana has already learned - set an alarm and timer, plan something and create notes in a notebook, etc.

Plus, the brainchild of Yandex does not always correctly recognize voice requests, does not launch all programs, and does not detect the user’s location on Windows devices without GPS. Nevertheless, the developers are making grandiose plans for the new voice assistant. Her project is so serious that Yandex employees demonstrated it among the key IT developments to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit to the company. During testing, Vladimir Vladimirovich, traditionally for his role, asked his assistant: “Are you being offended here?”

Who is Alice?

Alice was voiced by the famous actress Tatyana Shitova. It is her voice that is used in the voice engine through which the virtual assistant communicates with users. Alice is a character with her own character. Initially, the Yandex company planned to make her a noble maiden by loading literary terminology into her vocabulary. But when they realized that in this way they made the assistant too boring, the vocabulary system was taken from Twitter. As a result, Alice turned out to be a witty teenager: she knows how to be insolent and even rude on topics she doesn’t like, is endowed with a sense of humor and improvises, taking into account the context of the questions asked.

Alice Settings

Alice is not much, but it is a customizable tool. Site icons on the quick access panel can be changed to others from Yandex services, frequently visited or recently visited sites. Also for the utility you can:

Configure operations with files - opening them in a program or in an Explorer folder;

Separate the Yandex search tool and chat with Alice with two separate buttons on the Windows taskbar;

Select a browser to open search results.

Owners of the new version of Yandex, designed for Android users, receive expanded functionality. The voice assistant is called “Alice”, it is capable of performing a huge number of useful tasks: it will report the current air temperature, help you find a suitable entertainment venue, and also get directions to it, answer questions of interest using an online search - and that’s far not a complete list of available tasks.

To ask a question or use Alice’s help, you need to use the dialog box by entering the necessary commands. Moreover, the user can praise his virtual assistant - and Yandex Assistant will definitely thank the owner for this.

The current version of the system still needs some improvement, as its capabilities are very limited. But in the “Question-Answer” mode it works perfectly - having requested information about the work of the selected establishment, the user will immediately receive the necessary information. Even if “Alice” does not know the exact answer, she will find the necessary data on the Internet. If necessary, third-party applications can also be opened to help you find the answer to the question asked.

In some topics, “Alice” will be able to “understand” what is being said. For example, if you ask a question about the weather, you can later use various qualifications to get more detailed information. But this opportunity is not available for all topics.

The developers also took care to “revive” the virtual assistant, making an excellent alternative to the popular Siri and Google Assistant. “Alice” is also ready to joke, and can even quote popular compositions if you ask her to sing a song.

Only a test version has been launched so far, so errors are possible. Yandex Assistant pronounces some words with errors, pronouncing them exactly as they are printed. “Alice” reads some sentences too seriously, which is also not always appropriate. But this is a test version, so the shortcomings are quite forgivable.

A new interface is currently being tested. All changes and innovations will be known after completion of this procedure. According to the developers' promises, the new version of the virtual assistant from Yandex will be presented to the world and available to users this year.

Today, 10.10.17, the beta version of Yandex-Alice for computers on Windows OS was released! The best and safest way to download the Alice assistant for Windows is on the Yandex service, here is the safest one for you