Microsoft has announced Cortana, its answer to Google Now and Siri personal assistants.
Microsoft at its Build Conference in San Francisco has finally announced its long and much-rumored new mobile OS, the Windows Phone 8.1, together with their answer to Apple's Siri and Google's Google Now personal digital assistants its called Cortana. If you are familiar with the company's popular game franchise Halo, you would immediately recognize the same AI name from that game. It's actually named after that one.
Cortana is powered by Bing and according to most bloggers and tech enthusiasts, it's like a mix or combination of Google Now and Siri when it comes to functionality and personality. As what we can expect from a digital assistant, Cortana can help users set up alarms, add items to the calendar, find a nearest restaurants, make calls and texts and many more.
According to rumor before, Cortana would have its "Notebook" feature, which turned out to be accurate and this is where users can teach Cortana things about them this is also where Cortana saves all of those learnings. Also Microsoft Executive Joe Belfiore said, the more users use the Bing search engine the more Cortana will become familiar with them. He also added that there will be third-party that can help the voice assistant extend its functionality.
This newest voice assistant is launching in beta stage in the US and will over time be rolled out to other countries.When Cortana was asked by Belfiore what she (yes she has a female voice) thought of her appearance, she responded "Some things I resemble: A hula hoop, a donut, an a halo," remember Halo?
