SOVA is being created by the joint efforts of over 50 developers, linguists, and Data Science specialists who focused on releasing and developing a genuinely independent voice virtual assistant platform. What is SOVA? Smart Open Virtual Assistant, SOVA is a voice virtual assistant and an independent open platform for creating virtual assistants, with Amazon Alexa being the closest existing analog. SOVA consists of multiple frameworks, utility functions, and services. Summary: · SOVA’s key elements are speech recognition, chatbot engine, and speech synthesis; · SOVA software can be launched on practically any hardware; · SOVA’s possibilities constantly expand through the use of intelligence modules, which are specially designed plugins adding new features to SOVA. A community of developers works on creating the intelligence modules. · In addition to the software, we work with Open Hardware to develop our hardware specifications for SOVA launch: motherboards, range of microphones, and other peripherals. Our core principles: · No capitalizing on private lives of our users · Availability of software and device modifications, Open Source · Privacy: no cloud storage of user data if he doesn't agree with it · Decentralizing: the system is not to be reliant on just a few servers · Convenient developing: quality scripting language and machine learning technologies for developing intelligence dialog modules, IDE and API · Rich functional variety of the user ecosystem: a spectrum of intelligence modules, cross-platform possibilities, technology availability · Most importantly, we are striving to create a community that will work on training and improving all elements of the virtual assistant’s intelligence, from speech recognition to decision support system, moving us forward along the way to General AI.