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Cortana on Windows 10
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| Developer(s) | Microsoft | ||||
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| Initial release | April 2, 2014 | ||||
| Stable release(s) | |||||
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| Preview release(s) | |||||
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| Operating system | Windows, iOS, Android, Xbox OS | ||||
| Platform | |||||
| Available in | |||||
| Type | Intelligent personal assistant | ||||
| License | Proprietary | ||||
| Website | www | ||||
Cortana is a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft, which uses the Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and answering questions for the user.
Cortana is currently available in English, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese language editions, depending on the software platform and region in which it is used.
Microsoft began reducing the prevalence of Cortana and converting it from an assistant into different software integrations in 2019. It was split from Windows 10's search bar in April 2019, and was removed from iOS and Android in certain markets on January 31st the following year.
History
Cortana was demonstrated for the first time at the Microsoft BUILD Developer Conference in San Francisco. It has been launched as a key ingredient of Microsoft's planned "makeover" of the future operating systems for Windows Phone and Windows.
It is named after Cortana, a synthetic intelligence character in Microsoft's Halo video game franchise originating in Bungie folklore, with Jen Taylor, the character's voice actress, returning to voice the personal assistant's US-specific version.
Development
The
development of Cortana started in 2009 in the Microsoft Speech products
team with general manager Zig Serafin and Chief Scientist Larry Heck.
Heck and Serafin established the vision, mission, and long-range plan
for Microsoft's digital personal assistant and they built a team with
the expertise to create the initial prototypes for Cortana. Some of the key researchers in these early efforts included Microsoft Research researchers Dilek Hakkani-Tür, Gokhan Tur, Andreas Stolcke, and Malcolm Slaney,
research software developer Madhu Chinthakunta, and user experience
designer Lisa Stifelman. To develop the Cortana digital assistant, the
team interviewed human personal assistants. These interviews inspired a
number of unique features in Cortana, including the assistant's
"notebook" feature. Originally Cortana was only meant to be a codename, but a petition on Windows Phone's UserVoice site that proved to be popular made the codename official.
Expansion to other platforms
Cortana white interface on Windows 10 Mobile
In January 2015, Microsoft announced the availability of Cortana for Windows 10 desktops and mobile devices as part of merging Windows Phone into the operating system at large.
On May 26, 2015, Microsoft announced that Cortana would also be available on other mobile platforms. An Android
release was set for July 2015, but an Android APK file containing
Cortana was leaked ahead of its release. It was officially released,
along with an iOS version, in December 2015.
During E3 2015, Microsoft announced that Cortana would come to the Xbox One as part of a universally designed Windows 10 update for the console.
Cortana in other services
Cortana integrated in Microsoft Edge
Microsoft has integrated Cortana into numerous products such as Microsoft Edge,
the browser bundled with Windows 10. Microsoft's Cortana assistant is
deeply integrated into its Edge browser. Cortana can find opening hours
when on restaurant sites, show retail coupons for websites, or show
weather information in the address bar. At the Worldwide Partners Conference 2015 Microsoft demonstrated Cortana integration with products such as GigJam.
Conversely, Microsoft announced in late April 2016 that it would block
anything other than Bing and Edge from being used to complete Cortana
searches, again raising questions of anticompetitive behavior by the company.
Microsoft's "Windows in the car" concept includes Cortana. The
concept makes it possible for drivers to make restaurant reservations
and see places before they go there.
At Microsoft Build 2016, Microsoft announced plans to integrate Cortana into Skype
(Microsoft's instant messaging service) as a bot to allow users to
order food, book trips, transcribe video messages and make calendar
appointments through Cortana in addition to other bots. As of 2016, Cortana can underline certain words and phrases in Skype conversations that relate to contacts and corporations. A writer from Engadget
has criticised the Cortana integration in Skype for only responding to
very specific keywords, feeling as if she was "chatting with a search
engine" due to the impersonal way the bots replied to certain words such
as "Hello" causing the Bing Music bot to bring up Adele's song of that name.
Microsoft also announced at Microsoft Build 2016 that Cortana
would be able to cloud-synchronise notifications between Windows 10
Mobile's and Windows 10's Action Center, as well as notifications from Android devices.
In December 2016, Microsoft announced
the preview of Calendar.help, a service that enabled people to delegate
the scheduling of meetings to Cortana. Users interact with Cortana by
including her in email conversations. Cortana would then check people's
availability in Outlook Calendar or Google Calendar, and work with
others Cc'd on the email to schedule the meeting. The service relied on
automation and human-based computation.
In May 2017, Microsoft in collaboration with Harman Kardon announced INVOKE,
a voice-activated speaker featuring Cortana. The premium speaker has a
cylindrical design and offers 360 degree sound, the ability to make and
receive calls with Skype, and all of the other features currently
available with Cortana.
The Harman Kardon Invoke speaker, powered by Cortana
Functionality
Cortana
can set reminders, recognize natural voice without the requirement for
keyboard input, and answer questions using information from the Bing search engine (e.g., current weather and traffic conditions, sports scores, biographies). Searches using Windows 10 are only made with Microsoft Bing search engine and all links will open with Microsoft Edge,
except when a screen reader such as Narrator is being used, where the
links will open in Internet Explorer. Windows Phone 8.1's universal Bing
SmartSearch features are incorporated into Cortana, which replaces the
previous Bing Search app which was activated when a user presses the
"Search" button on their device. Cortana includes a music recognition service. Cortana can simulate rolling dice and flipping a coin. 'Cortana's "Concert Watch" monitors Bing searches to determine which bands or musicians the user is interested in. It integrates with the Microsoft Band watch band for Windows Phone devices if connected via Bluetooth, it can make reminders and phone notifications.
Since the Lumia Denim
mobile phone series, launched in October 2014, active listening was
added to Cortana, enabling it to be invoked with the phrase: "Hey
Cortana"; it can then be controlled as usual. Some devices from the United Kingdom by O2
have received the Lumia Denim update without the feature but this was
later clarified as a bug and Microsoft has since fixed it.
Cortana integrates with services such as Foursquare to provide restaurant and local attraction recommendations and LIFX to control smart light bulbs.
Notebook
Cortana
stores personal information such as interests, location data,
reminders, and contacts in the "Notebook". It can draw upon and add to
this data to learn a user's specific patterns and behaviors. Users can
view and specify what information is collected to allow some control
over privacy, said to be "a level of control that goes beyond comparable
assistants". Users can delete information from the "Notebook".
Reminders
Cortana
has a built-in system of reminders which for example can be associated
with a specific contact; it will then remind the user when in
communication with that contact, possibly at a specific time or when the
phone is in a specific location.
Originally these reminders were specific to the device Cortana was
installed on, but since then Windows 10 Microsoft synchronizes reminders
across devices.
Design
Most versions of Cortana take the form of two nested, animated circles
which are animated to indicate activities such as searching or talking.
The main color scheme includes a black or white background and shades
of blue for the respective circles.
Phone notification syncing
Cortana on Windows mobile and Android is capable of capturing device notifications and sending them to a Windows 10 device. This allows a computer user to view notifications from their phone in the Windows 10 Action Center. The feature was announced in early 2016 and released later in the year.
Miscellaneous
Cortana has a "do-not-disturb" mode in which users can specify "quiet hours", as was available for Windows Phone 8.1 users. Users can change the settings so that Cortana calls users by their names or nicknames. It also has a library of "Easter Eggs", pre-determined remarks.
When asked for a prediction, Cortana correctly predicted the winners of the first 14 matches of the football 2014 FIFA World Cup knockout stage, including the semi-finals, before it incorrectly picked Brazil over the Netherlands in the third place play-off match; this streak topped Paul the Octopus who correctly predicted all 7 of Germany's 2010 FIFA World Cup matches as well as the Final. Cortana can forecast results in various other sports such as the NBA, the NFL, the Super Bowl, the ICC Cricket World Cup and various European football leagues. Cortana can solve mathematical equations, convert units of measurement, and determine the exchange rates between currencies including Bitcoin.
Integrations
Cortana
can integrate with third-party apps on Windows 10 or directly through
the service. Starting in late 2016, Cortana integrated with Microsoft's Wunderlist service, allowing Cortana to add and act on reminders.
At Microsoft's Build 2017
conference, Microsoft announced that Cortana would get a consumer
third-party skills capability, similar to that in Amazon Alexa.
On February 16, 2018, Microsoft announced connected home skills were added for ecobee, Honeywell Lyric, Honeywell Total Connect Comfort, LIFX, TP-Link Kasa, and Geeni, as well as support for IFTTT. At Microsoft's Ignite 2018 conference, Microsoft announced an Technology Adopters Program
that Enterprises could build skills that could be developed and
deployed into Azure tenants, accessible by organizational units or
security groups.
Privacy concerns
Cortana
indexes and stores user information. It can be disabled; this will
cause Windows search to search the Web as well as the local computer,
but this can be turned off. Turning Cortana off does not in itself
delete user data stored on Microsoft's servers, but it can be deleted by
user action.
Microsoft has further been criticized for requests to Bing's website
for a file called "threshold.appcache" which contains Cortana's
information through searches made through the Start Menu even when
Cortana is disabled on Windows 10.
As of April 2014, Cortana was disabled for users aged under 13 years.
Regions and languages
The Chinese version of Cortana, Xiao Na
The British version of Cortana speaks with a British accent and uses
British idioms, while the Chinese version, known as Xiao Na, speaks Mandarin Chinese and has an icon featuring a face and two eyes, which is not used in other regions.
As of 2020 the English version of Cortana on Windows devices is
available to all users in the United States (American English), Canada
(French/English), Australia, India, and the United Kingdom (British
English). Other language versions of Cortana are available in France
(French), China (Simplified Chinese), Japan (Japanese), Germany
(German), Italy (Italian), Brazil (Portuguese), Mexico, and Spain
(Spanish). Cortana listens generally to the hot word "Hey Cortana" in
addition to certain languages' customized versions, such as "Hola
Cortana" in Spanish.
The English United Kingdom localised version of Cortana is voiced by voice actress Ginnie Watson, while the United States localised version is voiced by Jen Taylor. Taylor is the voice actress who voices Cortana, the namesake of the virtual assistant, in the Halo video game series.
The following table identifies the localized version of Cortana
currently available. Except where indicated, this applies to both
Windows Mobile and Windows 10 versions of the assistant.
Technology
The natural language processing capabilities of Cortana are derived from Tellme Networks (bought by Microsoft in 2007) and are coupled with a Semantic search database called Satori.
While many of Cortana's U.S. English responses are voiced by Jen
Taylor, organic responses require the use of a text-to-speech engine.
Microsoft Eva is the name of the text-to-speech voice for organic
response in Cortana's U.S. English.
Updating
Cortana updates were delivered independently of those to the main Windows Phone OS, allowing Microsoft to provide new features at a faster pace.
Not all Cortana-related features could be updated in this manner as
some features such as "Hey Cortana" required the Windows Phone update
service and the Qualcomm Snapdragon SensorCore Technology.
