At the end of September 2024, updates for the voice assistant “Alice” were released, including a family beacon, a schedule and a voice activity detector. New functions of “Alice” are already available to users.

The developers have expanded the functions of the “Alisa Pro” option (available to all users of the “Yandex Plus” product ecosystem. The service will be free for the first six months, and after that – 100 rubles per month). For example, there were free requests for testing the capabilities of “Alisa Pro” with the Yandex neural network model YandexGPT 3 Pro. Now anyone can try the possibilities of the “Alisa Pro” option – in Chat with “Alisa” one user can make five free requests every day.

What else is new in Alice and Alice Pro:

• it became possible to evaluate the answers of “Alice” directly in the chat by giving her a “like” or “dislike”, as well as to indicate what exactly you did not like in the answer by choosing one of the proposed options: “There is no answer to my question”, ” Incorrect information”, “Information is out of date”, “Little information”, “Unintelligible answer”, “Unacceptable or offensive answer”;

• the “Family Beacon” option has appeared for communication with loved ones. When the household wants to contact the user, they can simply say “Alice, call loved ones” and she will call and send an SMS to the specified numbers. This is especially convenient if you have children or elderly relatives at home who can quickly contact you without having to look for the phone. (the path to activate the option: Home with Alice → Alice for children → Family beacon). The “Family Beacon” option works on all “Yandex Stations”, as well as on “TV Stations”;

• “Alice Pro” got access to the option with regular reminders for the whole week in the application “Home with Alice” (path to activate the option: Settings → Alice for children → Routine);

• “Alice Pro” gained access to the voice activity detector option (path to activate the option: Settings → Alice for children → Activation by voice, you also need to enable this setting in the Control Panel section);

• in “Alice Pro” you can choose a melody for the alarm signal (the way to activate the option: Home with Alice → Settings → Alice for children → Good morning, click Alarm melody and select music from the suggested ones or enter the desired one in the search bar).

The developers also explained that specifically for hockey fans, Alice was taught to broadcast hockey matches on TV Station one team at a time. In this case, you don’t even need to turn on the TV. You can just say: “Alisa, turn on hockey” – and enjoy the game. And if there is currently no broadcast, “Alisa” will tell you when the next match will be.