Yandex updated Alice AI's image generator to create images with Russian text

Yandex has updated the image generator in Alice AI. Now the service has learned to correctly write Russian text on images — a task that many AI generators around the world have struggled with before.

What exactly improved

The generator in a conversation with the bot now correctly reproduces Russian letters, words, and even long phrases in images. Previously, Alice often created images with typos, inverted or unreadable letters. This was a serious problem for users who wanted to get a ready-to-use illustration with accurate Russian text. Now this problem has been solved thanks to improvements in model training.

For all users

The improvements are available to both regular Alice AI users and business clients with paid subscriptions. This significantly expands the generator's applications. Marketers, designers, and content creators can now use Alice to create social media posts, advertising materials, and full-fledged illustrations without additional processing in Figma, Photoshop, or other graphic editors. The improvement is especially useful for companies working with Russian-speaking audiences and needing quick content generation with text. Now you can create ready-made banners, video covers, promotional materials in minutes, not hours.

Main use cases:

• Banners and social media posts
• Advertising materials and landing pages
• Illustrations with captions and comments
• Presentations and report formatting
• Visual content for blogs and articles

Why this was a difficult task

Text generation on images is one of the most challenging tasks for modern AI models. Text requires precise spatial geometry of each letter and correct placement on the canvas, which is much more complex than drawing ordinary objects. And with the Russian language, the complexity increases many times over: the model must not only correctly render Cyrillic letters, but also follow Russian spelling, punctuation, and typography rules.

Western models like DALL-E work better with English text for a simple reason — they are trained on enormous volumes of English data. Local solutions like Yandex have an important advantage: they can be optimized specifically for the Russian language, its cultural and linguistic features. This allows achieving results that compete with global solutions.

How it works

Yandex has not disclosed the full technical details of the update, but improvements work at the architectural level of the generator. The model now better understands how letters and words should be arranged in image space. Additionally, special data with Russian text was added to the training, which helped the model learn to correctly write Cyrillic. Testing showed that the generator now handles long phrases, complex words, and even several paragraphs of text. Accuracy has improved significantly compared to the previous version.

What it means

Yandex positions Alice as a full-fledged content creation tool for the Russian-language market, rather than simply a multifunctional chatbot with various skills. This is an important step amid growing competition in the AI generator sector. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta — all technology leaders are investing enormous resources in improving their models, but often with a clear emphasis on the English language and Western markets. For Russian-speaking users, this means they get a solution optimized specifically for their needs. Yandex's update shows that local services can find their niche and competitive advantage by becoming truly better for a specific language, culture, and audience. This is an important principle in the era of global AI competition.

*Meta is recognized as an extremist organization and is banned in the Russian Federation.