Alice will be the first voice assistant to have the honor of serving as the text “dictator". Yandex developed Alice using SpeechKit advanced artificial intelligence technology for synthesis and speech recognition. As a result, Alice’s voice is similar to live human speech.
Traditionally, the author of the Total Dictation text would read it at Novosibirsk State University, headquarters for the event. This year it was decided to have another city serve as the “capital” city for the event. Vladivostok was chosen so the 2018 text author, Guzel Yakhina, will read it there.
As the founder of Total Dictation, NSU continues to be the center for implementing new ideas, including those related to cutting-edge modern technologies. This year, the University is inviting Dictation participants to write with the help of the smart, technological character Alice.
Olga Yakovleva, NSU Marketing Director, talked about this innovation,
Not so long ago it was impossible to imagine that cars would communicate with people. The leap fr om dream to reality took place so quickly that many of us did not notice it. Today artificial intelligence helps us in everyday life, at work or school. Since smart machines are part of our everyday life, we decided together with Yandex to make this popular service our main text "dictator" in 2018. The idea of having a voice assistant read the dictation is very much in the spirit of modern times and will be interesting to anyone who has interacted with Alice as well as to those who would like to try it for the first time.
This year, NSU plans to host 14 sites wh ere participants can sit and take the Dictation. After the official Total Dictation is read by Alice, you will be able to listen to the text any time and check your grammar knowledge yourself. Voice Assist is available on iOS and Android devices, as well as in Yandex.Browser for Windows.
