While Apple has Siri and Google has Google Now, Microsoft eagerly wants to compete in the virtual personal assistant market. The company took an approach that mixes the best of the competition with its own unique take and lifted the curtain to introduce its new assistant for the masses, Cortana.
Cortana is part of Microsoft's Windows Phone 8.1 software, the mobile platform's first major update in 18 months. Microsoft unveiled the update at its Build developers conference in San Francisco on April 2nd, 2014.
Interacting with Cortana is very similar to using Siri. Push an on screen button, ask a question in a conversational manner, and Cortana will go to work. And like Google Now, Cortana also has the ability to tap into apps and the phone's core services to deliver users contextual information.
Cortana has the ability to figure out what its user's habits (when they wake up, when they're at work, what they frequently search for), and use that information to predict their next move. Cortana uses both the Microsoft's search engine Bing and data stored on the mobile devices to make personalized recommendations and carry out tasks.
Usually, when virtual assistants are asked about something that has not been previously programmed to understand, they simply passes the word into a search engine. Microsoft has done a lot of work to make Cortana "learn" automatically in a wider range of semantics. This makes the personal assistant a strong competitor to Siri and Now.
"The vision behind what we're doing here is that this intelligence can expand beyond Windows Phone," explains Bing Director Stefan Weitz.
Microsoft is leveraging investments in data gathering that it has been making for half a decade. Cortana relies on Bing's backend services for the majority of its features, and that's backed up by thousands of servers in the background. Just as Google Now is connected with Google's search engine, it's impossible to imagine Cortana would ever exist without Bing.
Bing's Program Manager Vish Vadlamani recalls spending countless days working from 7AM until 11:30PM on Satori - a self-learning system that works on contents for Bing's indexes.
Cortana is named after the AI system in the Microsoft's Halo video game franchise. She is voiced by Jen Taylor.
Cortana on the Work
Cortana appears as an animated circle that springs to life and animates with different "emotions". As a personal assistant, Cortana does have a personality that shines through daily use. Tap on the magnifying glass search icon and Cortana appears with a "What's next?" or "What can I do now?" greeting. Users can then ask for information out loud by tapping the microphone button, or by typing in the query.
Cortana replaces the earlier search function on Windows Phone. When she (it) is launched from a pulsating button on the mobile device's start screen, it initially offers its own suggestion for the task the owner might want to carry out based on their location and past behavior it learned.
Cortana can also be instructed to find information on Bing or others on the mobile device, do certain tasks such as schedule appointment, set reminders and alarm, find restaurants, send messages, make phone calls, or make other apps carry out the user's command.
And if the user allows, Cortana can access the calendar, email, contacts and browsing history. This will further enhance Cortana to anticipate the user's needs. For example, it can offer to schedule a flight if it spots a message received from a travel booking service, and flag news articles it thinks the user will be interested in.
Similar as it may be to Siri and Google Now, Cortana isn't a straight clone either. Unlike the other two services, Microsoft allows third-party apps to utilize Cortana's service, either by controlling apps via voice or fetching data for predictive search. It can then actually push the results of its searches over to other apps.
One such example was using the Bing health tracker app. 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. Cortana can also be set to launch Facebook and bring up someone's timeline activity.
However, just like any living or virtual assistants, they can make mistakes. Here, the user can enter a Notebook function to amend the rules for Cortana to follow. Belfiore said the Notebook is meant to mimic those kept by many human personal assistants, while helping users feel like they are in control.
When Cortana is first launched on a mobile device, it runs through basic questions to learn about its user - name, food preferences, movie category the user like, and so on. After that, when the service is activated with Windows Phone's search button. Users can swipe down to see a "proactive view" of information. Cortana's way to provide information is 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. Users can improve the Notebook by manually adding personal interests, reminders, news, and other important data. Notebook is like the information for Cortana to turn into cards, and parts of it can be pinned as Live Tiles on the Start Screen or used as notifications.
One of the most useful features of Cortana is its ability to trigger actions based on events,. For instance, saying "remind me the next time I call my wife that we need to talk about Adam" will create a reminder that is triggered when a call goes to your wife or she calls you. Cortana also impresses when it shows a result when the user is searching for a place. With Siri and Now, users will see a big list of places that are closest to them. Cortana on the other hand, will deliver a single place that is rated the best in the area by Yelp users.
"The point is the user is in control of his or her relationship with Cortana," Belfiore explained.
Conclusion
Cortana is meant to be the primary way to discover and search for information on Windows Phone 8.1, or just an assistant to manage things in the user's daily life. Cortana is smart and witty, all while being designed to closely resemble a human assistant. With the competition is already years ahead, Cortana arrives when Microsoft is focused on catching up in mobile. Microsoft's bold new mobile efforts is seen to rest on her virtual shoulders.
Cortana is just another app developed to compete with other virtual assistants to give users an enhanced experience in using their mobile devices. Cortana, as well as Siri and Now, has shrunk a wide river of technology interaction to a gutter. But although it can be as good as it can be, it's still far from perfect. Just like any voice-enabled assistant, Cortana "hears" commands, process the information and deliver the best result it can "think" of. And just like any other virtual assistant, Cortana can hear things differently. It repeatedly failed to convert the weather forecast from Celsius to Kelvin, and also misunderstood a request to make a phone call.
For situations such as this, Belfiore noted that instructions could be typed rather than spoken. He also added that Cortana should get better when it interacts more with its user.
But there is one thing that Cortana lacks. Microsoft has less user base than Apple and Google. So people can expect that Cortana's learning won't advance as quickly.
And the last is the decision everyone has to make when using a personal assistant service. Since the more these services know about you, the more useful they become, are you willing to give your personal information to a tech company if it makes your life easier?