Belarusian version of Alice voice assistant may appear by late 2023

The United Institute of Informatics Problems of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus is working on the creation of a voice assistant, with an assistant similar to Alice or Siri being currently developed by the speech synthesis laboratory – as stated by Sergei Kruglikov, Director General of the NAS’ United Institute of Informatics Problems

“Our next task is to make our own ‘Alice’. It will not be a copy of already existing voice assistants. We plan to adapt it to our society. Now we are considering several directions in which it could communicate with users. To achieve this, we are working jointly with the institutes of history, sociology and others to make it not just an interlocutor, but a new product enabling people to navigate in different fields of knowledge,” he explained.

It is expected that the Belarusian version of the voice assistant Alice will appear by late 2023. At the same time, it already has a prototype now, but the development will be demonstrated later.

“We hope that call centres will turn to us to work with the Belarusian virtual assistant. This is an excellent direction for import substitution, which we can provide in the future. We will be able to constantly accompany and develop this product. Now it is being created as part of the state research programme as a pilot project. We hope that such large companies as Beltelecom will be interested in it. They have their own programmers, but they often do not have specialists who are capable of generating algorithms. Technologies are created in the National Academy of Sciences and university science, where a pool of researchers works.