An AI voice assistant in Russian on iPhone

The Russian voice

Russian is spoken by Supertonic, Orvena's second voice engine, which reads the written text without a pronunciation dictionary and covers 26 languages in one download. You choose one of ten voice styles, Female 1 to 5 and Male 1 to 5, and the style carries over to the other languages.

The download

The voices for Russian and 25 other languages come in one pack of about 400 MB. It downloads after you unlock voice, together with a pack of about 345 MB for English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, and both finish in the background. You can remove the pack you do not need under Settings, then Voice.

Setting it up

Start a voice conversation with the waveform button in the message field. With Spoken language left on Automatic, Orvena listens in the language of the current conversation, or in the language of its menus when the conversation is new. To keep it on Russian, open Settings and, in the Voice section, set Spoken language to Russian.

The first time you use a language, iOS downloads its on-device speech recognition model, so the "Getting ready…" screen stays up a little longer that once. Orvena's language picker only offers languages that it can both hear and speak.

Answers in Russian

Orvena's own model replies in the language you write or speak, message by message, so you can switch mid-conversation.

Apple does not list Russian for Apple Intelligence yet, so use Orvena's own model for it. If Apple's model is selected and turns down a message for its language, Orvena shows: "Apple Intelligence doesn't support this language yet. Download Orvena's own model in Models to chat in it."

Siri and Russian

Siri supports Russian, so with Siri set to Russian you can say "Спроси Orvena" to hand Orvena a question, or "Поговори с Orvena" to start a voice conversation.

What you can ask

• Move my 3 pm meeting to tomorrow.
• What is the weather this weekend?
• Remind me to call the dentist tomorrow at 9.
• Find a pharmacy near me.
• How did I sleep last night?

Orvena shows what it did for each request, and anything consequential asks you first.

What stays on the iPhone

The voice is generated on the iPhone, and speech recognition runs on the device. With Orvena's own model, what you say and its answer stay on the phone; you choose whether a request goes to a cloud model. Live voice with your own OpenAI key is the one exception: it sends your audio to OpenAI, and it asks first.

Common questions

Is the Russian voice free?

Voice conversations are part of Premium Unlock, a one-time purchase with no subscription. Typed chat in Russian is free.

Does the Russian voice assistant work offline?

Yes, once it is set up. With Orvena's own model and the voice pack downloaded, listening, answering and speaking all run on the iPhone. The first use of a language downloads Apple's recognition model for it.

Is the Orvena app in Russian?

Yes. Its menus, settings and messages are available in Russian, and it follows your iPhone's language.

Sources

• Apple Support: How to get the next generation of Apple Intelligence