Nearly one year after Yandex launched its AI-driven voice assistant Alice, two other major players are preparing to release their own intelligent assistants.
Competition is coming from Yandex’s archrival Mail.Ru Group, which is reportedly developing a concept combining a voice assistant and a smart speaker. Dubbed ‘Marusya,’ this product is being designed for potential integration to a range of in-house and third-party products and services.
The project was revealed last week by business daily Vedomosti, which cited both official and informal sources within the group.
Another entrant to the market is Tinkoff Bank, a leading Russian digital lending company. Its president Oleg Tinkoff has announced the imminent launch of a voice assistant, dubbed ‘Oleg’, as reported earlier this month by Vedomosti.
Not only will ‘Oleg’ help the bank’s clients complete financial operations (e.g. money transfer), the voice assistant will also assist them in doing household tasks (e.g. booking a table at a restaurant).
Alice everywhere?
Meanwhile Yandex’s Alice, which made the news for its occasional awkwardness, has been integrated into a variety of services and products.
The voice assistant is inside Yandex.Station, a smart speaker launched in May, and Yandex.Phone, the company’s brand-new smartphone.
Yandex went as far as integrating Alice into its new marketplace Beru: users may choose and purchase products on Beru by saying: “Alice, help me buy on Beru.”
To encourage Alice adoption across digital industries, Yandex has created the Yandex.IO platform, which allows manufacturers to add the assistant to their products. Thus, in November, Yandex unveiled two third-party smart speakers powered by Alice: IRBIS A and DEXP Smartbox.
“With [Yandex.Station, IRBIS A and DEXP Smartbox,] the intelligent assistant can be a helpful aid in any room of the house. In the kitchen, a smart speaker can help with finding recipes and setting a timer through simple voice commands, while on the nightstand you can ask Alice to set an alarm or play a soothing playlist for sleeping. Alice can be tasked with setting reminders or saying the news in the living room, while in a child’s room the assistant can be asked to tell a fairy tale or sing a song,” Yandex says.
In the first nine months of 2018, demand for portable audio speaker grew by 70%-80% (in both volume and value), said a representative of M.Video, a leading electronics goods retail chain, cited by Vedomosti.
