Microsoft Cortana Finally Revealed! Windows Phone Voice Assistant To Rival Apple's Siri

Microsoft is updating its Windows Phone software and introducing Cortana in its 8.1 update. This is the mobile platform's first major update in 18 months, bringing it up to speed with Apple's Siri and Google Now's virtual assistants. The feature has been in development for years and it is named after a character from the "Halo" video game series. Just like in the game, the assistant is voiced by actress Jen Taylor. Cortana is powered by Microsoft's search engine Bing and gets smarter as it knows more about the user asking questions and monitoring activities through text and speech. In keeping with a real assistants, Cortana has a "notebook" to work out of, which is a setting page where she stores users data.

"It’s her view of you, but clearly you can just snatch it from her at any time and say ‘That’s not right, I don’t want you to know this’ or ‘I’m not comfortable with you reading my email,’" Marcus Ash, group program manager of Windows Phone told The Verge. "So you have complete control over what she knows and she’s transparent about it. The site also states that "When you first launch Cortana, she runs through basic questions to learn about you — your name, your food preferences, what category of movie you like, and so on. After that, when the service is activated with Windows Phone's search button, you can swipe down to see a "proactive view" of information. It’s very similar to Google Now’s cards, with information on flights, sports results, stocks, and anything else Cortana has learned and jotted down in her Notebook. You can improve the Notebook by manually adding your personal interests, reminders, news, and other important data."

Time magazine shared their thoughts on the new assistant writing, "The voice synthesis is impressively natural, and she understands complex requests such as “Next time I talk with my sister, remind me to ask about her new puppy.” You can choose to provide Cortana with access to your email, so she can find items such as flight plans and then remind you about them and alert you to changes." The difference that Cortana offers is that she is able to push search results to third-party apps. "One such example was using the Bing health tracker app," CNN wrote. "In a demonstration at Build, Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's Windows Phone design chief, used Cortana to search for the number of calories in a banana. When the results came back, he was presented with option to add the banana to Bing's health tracker as something he ate." What do you think of Cortana? Is it a game changer that will entice you to switch to a different operating system?