In early June Tinkoff, the Russian digital banking giant, announced the beta version of its free voice assistant ‘Oleg,’ making it available to all mobile users in Russia. ‘Oleg’ is also unique in the world in that “it can be easily activated both in the Tinkoff super app and via popular messengers such as Telegram …
Tinkoff offers virtual phone secretary to all Russian mobile phone users Read More
Starting April 1, 2021, tech device manufacturers will be required to pre-install Russian-made, government-approved applications and software onto new devices sold on Russian soil. Dubbed “anti-Apple law,” this legislation was adopted in late 2019 as part of the Putin administration’s “sovereign Internet” strategy. While the law did not specify what devices new electronic devices are …
Tinkoff, the Russian digital banking leader, has integrated its AI-powered voice assistant ‘Oleg’ into Clubhouse — claiming to be the first one in the world to do so. The capabilities of the voice assistant as a “a full-fledged Clubhouse user” are described as follows: ‘Oleg’ can use its text-to-speech and speech-to-text capabilities (Tinkoff VoiceKit) in real time to “help …
Tinkoff launches AI-powered voice assistant on Clubhouse Read More
Yandex presented new AI services DataSphere and SpeechKit Pro during the Yandex Scale conference , which runs from September 23 to 25. DataSphere presents itself as “a service for ML development that combines the most popular tools and scalable resources for the full cycle of machine learning: from an experiment to the launch of a finished model.” It includes both a development environment and computing …
Yandex launches new AI-powered professional services Read More
Yandex, Russia’s biggest Internet company, has released an online game that invites players to guess where photos were taken. The images are taken from a database of photos uploaded by users to the Yandex.Maps app (similar to Google Maps). The human players compete against the specially trained neural network Alice, which is already used as …
Leading Russian consumer lender TCS Group that operates Russia’s only pure online bank Tinkoff Bank has launched B2B speech recognition services, Kommersant daily reported on July 22 citing representatives of the company. TCS will allow third parties to develop their own voice recognition applications such as voice assistants and robots for call centres using the Tinkoff VoiceKit. Tinkoff Bank’s …
Today Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian Internet giant, announced two high-tech, AI-related novelties. The company unveiled what it touts as “Russia’s first smart home ecosystem.” It is powered by Alice, the smart assistant which Yandex launched two years ago and made the news in sometimes surprising ways. “Alice can now turn on lights, adjust a thermostat, control …
Yandex launches AI-powered smart home gadgets and video stream features Read More
Tinkoff Bank, a tech-friendly Russian bank, has launched an own-branded online travel agency. The offer includes air and railway tickets, packaged tours, hotels and car rentals. Since April 2018, the bank has put around $2 million to develop this travel service platform, the press service told us. However, the platform worked so far “as a …
Tinkoff Bank positions itself on Russia’s $15 billion online travel market Read More
Every year, the social media management platform Hootsuite and the We Are Social agency compiles a Global Digital Yearbook that covers developments in internet, social media, mobile and e-commerce usage throughout the world. We combed through this ever-growing report to distill the 10 key takeaways regarding the current state of Internet usage in Russia: Internet penetration stands at …
This past Friday Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian search company, announced its unaudited financial results for Q4 2018 and FY 2018. The last quarter of the year saw the company’s revenues reach 38.8 billion rubles ($559.1 million), up 39% from Q4 2017, while its adjusted net income jumped to 6.9 billion rubles ($100 million), up 32% …
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 …
‘Alice,’ ‘Marusya,’ ‘Oleg:’ Voice assistants and smart speakers take off in Russia Read More
As the Russian e-commerce market is entering a new growth and concentration cycle, the joint venture formed by Yandex and Sberbank, launched two online marketplaces over the past few weeks. One of them, dubbed ‘Beru’ (“I’ll take it”), became fully operational in early November, after five months of beta testing. The platform features “over 1,000 retailers and …
Yandex and Sberbank launch two marketplaces, aim for e-commerce leadership Read More
