The Future Of Cortana Is Cloudy

Microsoft’s digital assistant is everywhere and yet, seemingly nowhere at the same time. Cortana, which is available on all major platforms has big ambitions but its future is a bit uncertain as Microsoft is either purposely limiting its potential or moving too slowly in the consumer space.

If you own an iPhone or Android device, you can access to Cortana and if you are running Windows 10, it comes with the OS too. Microsoft has also included the assistant with Xbox One and of course it is on Windows 10 Mobile as well but here's the problem, it doesn’t have any meaningful endpoints.

And by meaningful end points, I mean high capacity user interactions that use voice as the primary means of input; it’s important to make this distinction. For example, on the desktop, voice interaction with the PC and Cortana is minimal. Technically, using search by hitting the Windows and typing a query is an interaction with Cortana, but let’s face it, this is a search and prior version of Windows had a similar feature, so calling this ‘using Cortana’ is a bit of a fallacy.

The desktop is likely the largest install-base of Cortana with over 400 million active installations of the platform but as noted previously, most users don’t talk to their PC; we grew up using mouse and keyboard and changing our input habits is a difficult task. When I asked users on Twitter, who are likely more engaged with Windows 10 than the typical consumer, the response was low voice utilization with Cortana on the desktop.

Microsoft has found use-cases for Cortana, like with Edge, but the fact remains, these are background tasks and not direct interaction with the user. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but at the same time, it’s not the same as talking to Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant. Users are not interacting with Cortana with their voice, it’s a background task running and while it does help, it’s a passive way of interacting instead of an active method.

Both Google and Amazon have taken steps to bring their AI personalities directly to the consumer with Home and Echo. While Home is still new, and personally I don’t like the fact you say “Ok Google” as if you are offering praise to the Google gods for using the service, Alexa has been immensely popular with consumers.

Apple has yet to show off a headless kitchen PC like an Echo but Siri is baked into every iPhone and with millions sold each month, it has a meaningful connection to the consumer; holding the Home button down for a few seconds on an iPhone launches Siri. This meaningful end-point for Apple is what allowed Siri to be a household name; the company has also recently released Siri for the desktop too, although it’s level of interaction on that platform is not currently known.

Apple has the iPhone, Google has Home and Android devices, Amazon has its Echo but Microsoft lacks a meaningful endpoint where Cortana is used like a true AI assistant. Even though the com...

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