Kruglikov: Belarus-made voice assistant is element of national security

The speech synthesis and recognition laboratory of the United Institute of Informatics Problems of the National Academy of Sciences is currently working on the creation of a voice assistant similar to Alice or Siri. Institute’s Director General Sergei Kruglikov answered how much do we need such development.

“We desperately need it. After all, our own voice assistant is an element of national security. The systems that we now use are located on the territory of other states. All information is stored on third-party servers and in third-party cloud services. The Belarusian voice assistant is being created as a pilot project within the framework of the state research programme. Our version will not be a copy of existing analogues. It will be rather adapted to our society. We create not just an interlocutor, but a product that will help you navigate across various areas and spheres of life. Therefore, we liaise with other institutes of the National Academy of Sciences, e.g., the institutes of history and sociology. The prototype of the Belarusian version of the voice assistant is ready and we plan to demonstrate it in late 2023,” Sergei Kruglikov noted.