Microsoft Cortana

In the rapidly growing world of innovations and hi-tech discoveries, corporations have to dwell in pace with time in order not to lose in the endless rivalry. Microsoft is not an exception; the company has recently announced that it will get its own analogue of Siri. Despite the fact that Microsoft keeps all the information about the upcoming update of Windows 8.1 in the strictest confidence, the information about the future changes and additions to the operating system has leaked to the Web anyway.

One of the main surprises and innovations at the same is going to be the appearance of Cortana - a personal digital assistant. According to the hi-tech portal The Verge, Cortana, which combines the functionality of Google Now and Siri, is about to replace Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. However, unlike the mentioned rival products, Cortana will have its own identity. Some experts even joke that it will look like the famous, annoying clip of the old package of MS Office. Nonetheless, it is not really clear how Cortana will look like, but one can assume that the image of the mobile assistant matches the original - the eponymous heroine of Halo, a flagship video game series by Microsoft. Cortana will simulate emotions and adapt to the user; hence, the system is likely to be self-learning.

Ii seems like the question of personal data integrity was really considered in the Microsoft Corporation. It is known that Cortana will be supplied with some additional feature (a “notebook”) - an application that allows users to manually select which personal information an electronic secretary may use on a Windows Phone.

Cortana collects contextual information obtained from services such as Bing or Foursquare. By the way, it is apparently powered by Satori - the main engine behind Bing. Cortana is able to provide information regarding the weather, stock quotes, help to navigate, recall about a meeting and so on (actually, nothing impressing to the Siri users). Therefore, the functional analogs of digital assistant are not much different.

In July 2013, Bill Gates mentioned the fact that Microsoft could create its own “smart” assistant. He said that the new generation of personal assistants had to conduct an ongoing dialogue with the person, and should be able to do much more than just give advice on specific products. According to Gates, such systems, for example, should help to choose a gift or to arrange a visit.