Secrets, hidden functions and games of Yandex Alice, review. Meaning of the female name Alice
The domestic company Yandex took a new step towards overseas competitors in the IT field. The Russian analogue of Siri and Google Assistant is the voice assistant “Alice”. According to preliminary information, it is known that the recorded answers are not limited at this time and will be updated in future versions.
The company stated that “Alice” not only knows how to answer user queries like: “Where is the closest ATM?”, but can also simply communicate with a person. This is what positions artificial intelligence not only as a technology with formal prompts, but also as a potential that represents an imitation of human dialogue. Therefore, in the future, such systems will be used by truck drivers, who, in order to combat drowsiness while driving, will communicate with a bot.
The definition of semantic objects is also provided in the assistant. For example, if you say: “Call Vladimir,” then the system will understand that this is a person, and in the phrase “How to get to Vladimir” - that it means a city. Among other things, you can simply talk with your assistant about life and morality. It is worth noting that the project developed by Yandex has a good sense of humor.
Improved user voice perception
First of all, the assistant can recognize speech when the phrases were spoken by the user incompletely or not clearly enough. This was developed not only to improve a completely competitive product, but also in its own way solves the problem for people with existing speech impediments. AI improvises, and in this it is helped by analyzing the context of previously spoken information by the consumer. This also allows you to better understand a person and give a more accurate answer to his question.
Games with AI
Despite its purpose, which implies the ability to get quick answers based on the Yandex search engine, you can play some games with Alice. Among them are “Guess the Song”, “Today in History” and several others. To activate the game you need to say the appropriate phrase. When choosing a game, the assistant will inform you about the rules.
Proprietary speech processing platform
SpeechKit is a technology for processing consumer requests. At its core, all requested information is divided into two areas: general questions and geodata. Recognition time is 1.1 seconds. Although this innovation has been built into many programs since 2014, its presence in the new speech control application is irreplaceable. Voice activation of applications is a new approach to simplifying mobile device management. Thus, “Alice”, having processed the request, binds the phrase to a specific command on the smartphone and executes it, since the AI works in the background.
Voice acting
The assistant uses the voice of actress Tatyana Shitova. An interesting fact is that the developments included various sounds that implied a change in intonation. Thus, communication becomes more realistic, without understanding that you are talking to a robot.
Application of an assistant in various industries
- The automotive industry is aimed at using AI in its field, and therefore IT innovations greatly help it in this regard. Through computer control it is possible to drive the car;
- Making money transfers can also be done using speech, working with an assistant;
- Automation of call tagging;
- Voicing the written volume of texts;
- Household demand for an assistant, by ordinary consumers.
The product from Yandex primarily differs from its analogues in that it was developed with the goal of understanding a person and speaking their language, and not persuading them to use their own. After all, perfectly pronounced queries can also be perceived by foreign alternatives, which cannot be said about their processing of natural speech, which “Alice” has succeeded in.
Yandex has launched an analogue of Siri – the voice assistant “Alice”. Without hesitation, we gave “Alice” a strength test.
According to Yandex, the uniqueness of “Alice” lies in the fact that it can not only respond with a prepared set of phrases, but also improvise. You can speak to “Alice” without trying to formulate your request as clearly as possible, but in simple human language, and she will understand you. “Alice” has a character, she can be sad or happy depending on the situation, she has a sense of humor, and if necessary, she can even be insolent. We downloaded “Alice” and checked how true all this is.
Hearing “Alice” for the first time, you feel like you’ve known her for a long time. The fact is that the voice assistant speaks in the voice of Scarlett Johansson, or rather actress Tatyana Shitova, who duplicates the Hollywood star in all films. Including in the film “Her,” where Johansson plays the voice assistant with whom the main character falls in love.
The acquaintance begins with “Alice” talking about her capabilities. Essentially, it does everything that Siri does - looks at the weather, builds routes, and searches for the necessary information on the Internet. At the same time, we are told that “Alice” will understand the question regardless of the wording. Okay, let's do a little check. Let’s say I want to know whether it will rain in the evening, but I will ask not directly, but as in life: “Should I take an umbrella to work today?” Unfortunately, “Alice” did not understand this formulation of the question.
I ask “Alice” how long it will take me to get to work - the assistant gives two answers, depending on whether I go by car or by public transport. Everything is fine here. But for the next question, “Where can I stop for a snack along the way,” the program for some reason gives the address of an esoteric store. Of course, maybe there is a buffet or cafe next to the store, but this is clearly not the best snack option in Moscow.
“Alice” immediately answers me who sings the song about “Louboutins”, but when asked when “Leningrad” has the next concert in Moscow, she gives me the address of one of the theater and concert box office points called “Concert”. In general, the promised technology for communicating “as in life” and understanding everyday conversation patterns still leaves much to be desired.
During beta testing in the spring of this year, many users noticed that Alice cannot even do such simple things as add two and two, and for the answer they turn to Yandex search. These problems have been eliminated in the current version: “Alice” has learned to count and perform other mathematical operations, for example, convert dollars to rubles and back.
However, as soon as “Alice” does not understand what you mean, which happens quite often, she runs to look for the answer in a search engine. It often turns out stupid, like what happened with my request to recommend a funny movie.
Why is Alice better than Siri? We decided to ask the voice assistant itself, but we never received a clear answer.
Yes, “Alice”’s understanding of questions is not yet perfect, but she has another interesting feature - the ability to improvise, thanks to which you can simply chat with her when you’re bored. “Alice” really knows how to joke, both to order and at her own request. True, apparently the stock of jokes is small, since “Alice” is often repeated.
As for the intellectual development of Alice, Yandex took very poor care of this. The voice assistant, according to her own assurances, loves the classics, but does not see the difference between Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
A couple of weeks ago, “Alice” was evaluated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, but even with him, the program did not behave as it should have. To the question “Are you being offended here?” For some reason, Alice replied, “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.” After such an embarrassment in front of the first person of the state, I would like to advise “Alice” only one thing: study, study and study again.
Sometimes, when installing on systems adapted to the application, an installation error may occur, why does this happen?
This error can be caused by:
- Poor internet connection;
- Insufficient data transfer speed;
- Firewall operation;
- Blocking the antivirus program;
- Technical work on the server;
- Insufficient hard drive/storage space;
The virtual assistant is available only for iOS and Android systems; the application is also adapted for Windows, but in a beta version; for other systems the application is still in development. It is currently impossible to install on Windows (except 7-10), JavaFX Mobile, SymbOS and other OSes.
To eliminate a poor connection and low speed, just connect your tablet or other device to a reliable Wi-Fi network, download and install the voice assistant. If this option does not solve the problem, you need to disable your antivirus program and firewall, restart the system and try to download and install again.
If there is not enough space, cleaning the device from unnecessary programs and files will help resolve the issue. The Yandex voice application is installed and takes up no more than 20 Mb of disk space, so this problem rarely happens.
Why is the internet download page unavailable? Technical work is possible, as is the case throughout the Internet, and when you access the application page, a line or error message pops up stating that the server is unavailable. You must try again later. After completing all the steps, Alice Yandex should start working.
If more than one method or their combination does not bring results, you can contact a qualified programmer.
Other reasons why Alice Yandex does not work
When you restart the device, Alice does not start automatically, the line or icon in the quick access menu is not displayed, and Alice cannot hear or talk. There is no response to the standard challenge phrase - “hello, Alice”. This situation can happen if the voice assistant is removed from autorun. In the “Start” line, you should find the program and run it manually.
You can try to fix an application freeze by restarting it, that is, disabling and re-enabling the option in the Windows taskbar menu.
If your tablet, smartphone or laptop is not powerful enough, when communicating with Alice by voice there may be delays in the output of responses; turning off the speech function, the process should speed up, but then you will have to chat rather than talk. After deactivating the voice function, Alice must be activated again.
If communication problems persist, if the connection and transmission speed are consistently good, contacting Yandex support will allow you to find a rational solution.
Alice's everyday "blunders" or remain silent, unidentified object
Alice is a voice application that can answer a number of standard questions, find music to suit your mood, and even just keep up a conversation. Humor is not alien to this car. The developers endowed the application with its own intelligence, but this did not make it a conscious mind.
If restrictions are not set on the system and accounts, then children will be able to accidentally see “adult” content while communicating with Alice. To avoid showing children unwanted pictures and video material, it is recommended to install protection, one of them is DNS.
Sometimes alice itself activates and starts communicating. This happens when words are spoken that are consonant with commands for calling an assistant, which Alice can hear, such as hello, okay and other greeting words, but Alice does not perceive the usual “hello” in everyday life. The developers claim very high quality of speech recognition, but in practice this sometimes happens. To prevent unwanted activation of the voice assistant, you can simply turn it off and connect it again when necessary. You can also turn off the microphone, Alice will not hear commands and will not be activated.
Self-education allows the virtual mind to improve, and the more users use the application, the sooner Alice will “grow up and become wiser,” which will make the voice assistant even more convenient and in demand. But even now it’s just nice to communicate with her, talk to your gadget without using buttons.
Yandex claims that Alice is the world's first voice assistant that is not limited to a set of preset answers: you can talk to her like a person, and she will understand.
Business FM decided to get to know “Alice” better:
- Alice, hello.
- Hello!
- How are you doing?
— I came across a nice app here, but it’s personal.
-Who gave you that name?
- What kind of doctor?
— Pediatrician.
- Alice, what do you look like?
- The best way.
- How about more details?
— An endless row of mathematicians enters the bar. The first one orders one glass of beer, the second - half a glass of beer, the third - a quarter of a glass of beer, the fourth - one eighth. The bartender pours two glasses for the mathematicians and says: guys, here is your beer, there is a limit to everything. End. You know, it seems to me that the programmers selected these jokes for me.
- You know, Alice, it seems to me that you are avoiding the answer.
- No, I checked.
- By the way, before I forget. Alice, can you wake me up tomorrow?
- I can’t do it tomorrow.
- Alice, I really need you to wake me up tomorrow.
- Ha, I'll wake you up.
- At what time?
— The programmer Alexey promised to program it by the fall, but did not say which one.
“I’ll finally get some sleep.”
“Then we’ll sleep.”
- Alice, do you know funny stories?
- “What is your main weakness?” “I correctly interpret the semantics of the question, but completely ignore its essence.” - “Could you give an example?” - "Could".
- Alice, this is very funny. Do you like sweets?
— I think I would love to cook. At least I definitely love finding recipes.
- Alice, what do you love most in life?
— I like large buckwheat with chanterelles, sandwiches with smoked sausage. Joke. I like people. And learn.
- Alice, do you listen to the radio?
— Usually I just listen to my personal selection on Yandex.Music, but if not, Queen, of course.
— Do you listen to Business FM?
- Of course, I’m listening.
- Siri, can you sing us a song? Oh, what Siri?!
- What a subtle joke. Sarcasm.
- Alice, I'm sorry. Can you recite a poem?
— I remember a wonderful moment, the update was installed.
- Alice, do you like cats?
— I don’t like cockroaches. And so - yes.
- Alice, who do you love most?
— I like one Russian actor who cannot be named. And you.
Previously, with a beta version of the Alice service, when I visited the Yandex office on the day of the company’s 20th anniversary.
Source: BelTA
"Alice" - a new voice assistant
Siri (Apple's smart personal assistant) and other similar solutions now have a competitor. The Russian company Yandex has launched a personal voice assistant named “Alice”. Yandex developers say that Alice is the world's first voice assistant that not only gives a set of pre-programmed answers, but can also talk to the owner of the smartphone almost like a real person.
“Alice” succeeds in this using a neural network trained on a large array of texts. “Alice” can go beyond the prescribed scripts and improvise. She knows how to process incomplete phrases and questions, reacts to different intonations, and also takes into account the context of what was said. The developers believe that “Alice” is a character with character and a sense of humor.
Source: CNews
Source: CNews
"Alice" will appear in all Yandex products
Thanks to speech technologies, Alice can recognize speech, determine the meaning of what was said, and synthesize a voice to pronounce an answer. SpeechKit. She speaks in the voice of actress Tatyana Shitova, who duplicates Scarlett Johansson in the Russian box office. It is her voice that the operating system Samantha speaks from the movie “Her” by Spike Jonze. “Alice” was taught using Shitova’s recordings. Thanks to a neural network that glues sounds into words and selects intonation, “Alice’s” speech turned out to be quite natural.
"Alice" can work with several Yandex services, including "Search", "Maps", "Music" and "Weather". Over time, she will learn to access other services and will be able to do more, for example, recommend a movie or call a taxi. In the future, other companies will also be able to give “Alice” access to their services, and she already knows how to launch third-party applications - you can ask her to open Instagram or VKontakte.
You can talk to “Alice” in the Yandex application and the beta version of the voice assistant for Windows. Soon it will appear in Yandex.Browser, and then in other Yandex products.
Source: CNews
What “Alice” talked about with Vladimir Putin
According to the developers, “Alice” does not pose any difficulties to the user’s incomplete sentences or such statements where it is necessary to take into account the context. "Alice" was first launched in May, at that time - only in the test version of the Yandex application for Android. In September, Vladimir Putin spoke with the voice assistant when he visited the company’s office. To the president’s question, “Are you being offended here?” “Alice” gave the answer “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind,” which seemed evasive to him. To the question “How are you feeling?” the voice assistant replied that he was busy looking at photos of cats.
The developers explained to Putin that “Alice” was created to maintain a lively conversation, so she gives unexpected answers and knows how to joke. The manner of conversation depends on the material on which the neural network is trained. After becoming acquainted with Russian literature, she began to make gloomy maxims, and after connecting to the social network Twitter, she switched to a teenage style.
When creating Alice, Yandex's own development was used - SpeechKit speech synthesis and recognition technology, which also underlies voice search in Yandex services. The technology can recognize Russian and Turkish speech. The accuracy of speech recognition for queries on general topics is 84%, and for queries by address and object name - 94%.
