Voice input in Alice: how to dictate text

Potok turns speech into text in 33 languages, including English and Russian.

Alice has a voice conversation button for the assistant, which lets you talk to Alice AI by voice, and activation with the phrase “Slushay, Alisa” (“Listen, Alice”) works only in Yandex Browser for Windows. There is no data on whether Alice inserts dictated speech straight into a text field. You can dictate text into any field, including Alice's chat, with Potok (potok.now), at about 900 characters per minute by voice.

Voice input in Alice can mean different things: talking to the assistant itself by voice or dictating text into the chat. Let us see which of these Alice can do according to Yandex's documentation, and how to dictate any text if the app lacks the mode you need.

Does Alice have voice input of text into a field

Alice has a voice conversation with the assistant: in the lower right corner of the chat there is a button that starts or ends a voice conversation with Alice AI. Voice activation with the phrase “Slushay, Alisa” (“Listen, Alice”) or “Slushay, Yandex” (“Listen, Yandex”) works only in Yandex Browser for Windows; judging by the help, other browsers have no such activation.

This is a conversational mode for talking to the assistant by voice, not line-by-line dictation in which each spoken word turns into text in the input field. The official help gives no data on whether Alice has such line-by-line dictation. We look at the same question, a voice mode of its own versus ordinary text dictation, for ChatGPT too.

If you need to dictate text accurately into Alice's chat field or any other field on the computer, the Windows system dictation works for this (Win+H recognizes speech in the Microsoft cloud; Russian is available only in Windows 11, Windows 10 does not have it), and so does Potok (potok.now), which inserts dictated text into the active field of any app.

How to dictate text in Alice with Potok

1. Open Alice in the browser at alice.yandex.ru or in the Windows app and place the cursor in the field you need: the chat line with the assistant or any other field on the page.
2. Hold Potok's hotkey (Ctrl+Space by default) and, without releasing it, say the text.
3. Release the key: the recording goes to Potok's servers, the text is recognized and appears in the same field where you placed the cursor.
4. Check the text and send it, or keep dictating.

Punctuation and capital letters are placed automatically; you do not need to dictate “comma” or “period” separately. Recognition runs in the cloud on Potok's own model trained on Russian speech, including terms and Russian text mixed with English words, which is handy for Alice if the conversation includes English names. Potok states about 900 characters per minute, noticeably faster than ordinary typing (about 200 characters per minute). If the default hotkey is inconvenient or already taken by another program, you can change it in the settings to a ready combination, your own key or a side mouse button.

Where voice input in Alice will not work

Alice's voice activation with the phrase “Slushay, Alisa” works only in Yandex Browser for Windows; judging by the help, other browsers and other systems have no such activation.

Potok is a cloud service with recognition on servers in Russia; it does not work without the internet. It has no voice commands or voice editing of text: it only inserts the finished text into the field you chose. It has no offline mode and no phone app: it is a desktop program for Windows, macOS and Linux. The full list of apps we have covered is in the section voice input in apps.

Frequently asked questions

Built-in dictation and Potok

Primary sources: alice.yandex.ru · browser.yandex.ru