Yandex warned about possible disruptions in the operation of the Alisa voice assistant, smart speakers, and smart home devices. The reason was damage to the company's server infrastructure after drone attacks on two data centers. The problems affected the computing power required for neural networks to operate.
In the chat with Alisa AI, some features are temporarily unavailable, and generating responses may take longer than usual. Owners of Yandex Stations may also experience pauses before the assistant's responses and interruptions of certain functions. In addition, some smart home devices may operate unstably.
The problems arose after two attacks on the company's infrastructure. On the night of October 7-8, the data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, suffered serious damage – its operation was completely halted. On the morning of October 9, drones attacked another Yandex facility in Kaluga, where some equipment also failed. Employees of both centers were not injured.
The Alisa team explained that modern AI assistants depend on powerful computing clusters located in data centers. These clusters process requests and support neural network models. Therefore, damage to such infrastructure can affect not only digital services but also familiar home devices.
Yandex specialists continue to restore the infrastructure and eliminate the consequences of the incidents. The company also agreed with VK Cloud, Selectel, and K2Cloud on accelerated data and service migration for affected clients to other sites. However, the exact timing for full equipment recovery is still unknown.