Alice began to understand commands without direct address to her

Alice has learned to understand quick commands. You don’t have to call her by name to ask her something. You can just say “Turn off the light” or “Shh” and Alice will know you’re talking to her. You can turn on quick commands in the Home with Alice settings.

“We always wanted Alice to be human-like in her communication. So we taught her how to whisper, convey emotion through intonation, and recognize family members by their voices. Quick commands are another step in this direction. We ourselves understand perfectly well from the situation when we are addressed. Now Alice can do that too,” says Sergey Melnik, head of Alice and smart devices.

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Alice knows more than 20 quick commands: for example, play, stop, stop, stop, higher, lower, home. You can use them to turn lights on and off, control movie playback, listen to music, and adjust the volume. They don’t interrupt Alice’s speech like other commands. For example, if Alice answers a question too loudly, you can simply say “Shh!”. This won’t stop her from speaking to the end, which means you won’t have to interrupt her. Users can choose which quick commands to use: 

Implementing quick commands is technically challenging. First, we had to teach Alice to recognize quick commands as activation words. To do this, we used the same algorithm that we used to teach Alice and Yandex words. Second, it was important to minimize false positives. To do this, they changed Alice’s sensitivity and taught it not to respond to meaningless commands (like the “pause” command when nothing is playing).

The new feature is available in all Stations, from Max to Lite. If you pair the speaker with a TV, you can control video playback as well. To turn quick commands on or off, you need to open the Home with Alice app (Voice Assistant settings, Quick Commands Settings).