Yandex Qazaqstan has introduced a bilingual Alice in smart speakers — she speaks in Kazakh and Russian.

At the Yandex Qazaqstan Day festival, Alice in smart speakers was presented, which can communicate in Kazakh. She has mastered a second language in addition to Russian and can now switch between the two languages on her own during conversations. This is the world’s first bilingual Alice in smart devices.

Bilingual Alice is available on both new and previously purchased Yandex speakers. This feature can be enabled on the Midi Station, Max with Zigbee, Station 2, Mini with Clock, Mini, Light, and Max. To do this, simply go to the "Home with Alice" app, select the speaker, then choose "Assistant Language" in the settings, and finally select "Қазакша + Русский".

Until now, Alice knew Kazakh only in the Yandex and Yandex Browser mobile apps—for example, she could provide a weather forecast, an interesting fact, or a joke. Previously, the assistant responded in the language the user had selected in the settings. Now, in the apps, Alice switches between the two languages on her own—for this, it is enough to select Kazakh once in the settings. The virtual assistant has also learned to understand even more commands in this language—both in speakers and in apps. For example, Alice can play music, set a timer and alarm, and control the smart home.

Every day, people ask Alice up to 200,000 questions in Kazakh through Yandex apps. In Kazakhstan, users ask the assistant in speakers to play music about 1 million times a day, chat 800,000 times, and ask about the weather 150,000 times. Yandex Qazaqstan added Kazakh to smart devices to give people even more opportunities to communicate with Alice in this language.

To make Alice understand and speak Kazakh, the company trained her on a large volume of data, including thousands of manually translated dialogues and hundreds of hours of audio recordings. Yandex Qazaqstan also used about 1,000 hours of speech fragments recorded by native speakers. Linguists participated in developing communication scenarios for Alice so that she could support a lively dialogue. For example, specialists selected appropriate phrasing for different situations.

Daniil Shuleyko, Global CEO Yandex

I want to highlight everything related to the Kazakh language. We have done a lot in this direction over the past year. For example, today, every seventh query in Yandex Search is already in Kazakh. "Neuro Search" is a new product that immediately provides an answer using information from the entire internet.

Yandex Qazaqstan is a technology company that creates products and services based on machine learning and neural networks. The company develops and implements innovative technologies aimed at improving users' lives and developing the digital environment in Kazakhstan. Search, city, cloud, and entertainment services are already operating in the country, and the company is also developing educational and social projects.