Cortana

At Build 2014, Joe Belfiore, vice president of Microsoft's Windows Phone program, gave a spectacular and lengthy presentation of Cortana, the The company's commitment to the virtual assistant segment.

There have been many rumors for a long time, about the features and capabilities of this software that, following the line of the company in recent years, reuses concepts from decades ago, to build an experience of transversal user to all current platforms.

Thus, unites in a single point office concepts, digital entertainment, artificial intelligence and social media.

History of the virtual assistant in Windows

Exploring virtual assistants is a long-standing goal of Microsoft, whichhas spent decades researching and working on developing synthetic assistants that will facilitate life to users.

You could discover its first steps in the mid-90s, when a very simple graphical interface aimed at basic users was published called Microsoft Bob , to run on Windows 3.1x.

The extreme simplicity - bordering on the childish - and an abuse of the presence of the help provided by the first virtual assistants, led to the failure of the proposal.

Microsoft Bob was the prehistory of Cortana and the origin of Clipo, the Office assistant. But here we see the beginnings of what would become a few years later “Clipo”, the sadly famous virtual assistant of the office suite Office.Which, in the company of a wide variety of aspects, caused the general rejection of the users during several versions of the software, until its final disappearance with the arrival of the 2007 edition. In both cases, the biggest "hack" was the excessive presence of virtual assistants, an annoying degree of "stupidity" and the lack of empathy on the part of users towards avatars, once again, too childish.

The most unfair thing is that, behind Clipo and his colleagues, there wasexcellent research on artificial intelligencethat led to the Microsoft Agent. A whole set of technologies on which to build user assistance avatars. And that it disappeared from the company's catalog and support with the arrival of Windows 7, given the non-existent response from the community.

Cortana's Origin Story

“My name is Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal”

This is how the sword of Ogier the Dane, a chivalrous character from 15th century European popular literature, describes itself.

Whether or not this is the origin of the name of the artificial intelligence that is one of the protagonists of the Halo saga, a hugely successful video game on Xbox (and on PC, where it was born by Bungie), I cannot be sure.

Cortana, in Halo, is an advanced virtual assistant to Master Chief, John-117 Without her, the impressive armor that conceals the The most powerful of the Spartans would be impossible to handle, and most of the missions they have overcome together would never have had a good ending.

Born from brain cloning, Dr. Catherine Halsey, creator of the Spartan program, differs from the rest of the AIs in the series in that she has an unlimited capacity for expansion and learning, at the cost of having a life expectancy limited to just over 7 years, before entering a self-destructive process that will lead to its deactivation.

Two main characteristics have marked his success: his way of expressing himself with a sensual, expressive and calm female voice – interpreted by actress Jen Taylor - and a holographic representation in human form - inspired by the Egyptian queen Nefertiti – from great beauty and eroticism

For its animation in the video game and in the cinematic scenes, motion capture systems and 3D expression have been used. Being the actress Mackenzie Mason who has given life to the virtual puppet, with an excellent interpretation.

Cortana, the virtual assistant

Unlike most media, I think Cortana doesn't get to be just a “ Siri killer ” Looking back over the years that Microsoft has been researching and developing user assistance systems with artificial intelligence, Siri and its Android namesake, are witch's apprentices compared to what Cortana represents.

So, the first time I launch Cortana on my Windows Phone, she starts collecting data about my searches and actions in a notebook, which is stored in turn in the Cloud, to keep learning and inferring my tastes, preferences and needs to adjust the AI ​​and the services offered.

Among these services I have making calls to my contacts or search results (such as a restaurant), managing my messages, the calendar and the management of alerts, taking quick notes, alarms, cataloging and play music, manage places, and search.

And the latter is one of Cortana's great advantages: its integration and use of the powerful Bing search engine.

We have to wait how many Bing services will arrive from Cortana

Outside the US, Bing is a rather sparing search engine, which brings inaccurate results ( although it is improving) and little else.However, the North American public enjoys a particularly powerful search platform, with many capabilities and services that we do not have access to from Europe.

So, for example, in Joe Belfiore's excellent demonstration, he asked Cortana to find out how many calories are in a banana, and the result was a small token indicating the 105 calories it provides on average, and a series of associated nutritional data.

Now we will have to wait and see how many of these services we will have from the first moment of the arrival of Windows Phone 8.1, and how long it will take for those that are not yet enabled to be exported.

Another feature of Cortanta is that it can work as a virtual secretary That is, manage my calendar appointments, being able to indicate new events not only from the calendar, but from any application that allows you to register an appointment.Reminding me, at the time, by voice or alerts of the daily activity that I have organized.

If we add to this an advanced management of reminders and notifications, we have a true virtual assistant that is capable of reading, searching and retrieving information from all the sources I have on my Smartphone, such as emails, social networks, calendars, documents, etc., and then display it in an orderly and intelligent way.

Finally, Cortana, like that pioneering Windows Agent technology, is a platform on which third-party applications can be developed Opening up, if it works and is accepted by the general public, a very juicy new market for application development companies.

Conclusions

I can't wait to have Cortana on my mobile to check your congratulations firsthand. And everyone who has followed the Build 2014 event shows the same curiosity and desire to try it.

However the risk is very high. To this day, all virtual assistants have ended up disappointing or being forgotten in a corner. Not even Apple's overwhelming machinery for building “hype” has managed to make Siri go beyond being a curiosity that almost no user uses other than to show off how good their mobile is.

The use of voice commands requires a degree of accuracy in the interpretation of commands that has not yet been achieved, and that causes interaction with the assistant to be slow and difficult enough to leave it to a side.

Cortana can make a difference. It may be the real arrival of AI in the form of a virtual assistant, to electronic devices; and that one of the science fiction forecasts of what the 21st century would be like is fulfilled.

In XatakaWindows | Cortana Special, Build2014 Special In Xataka Movil | This is Cortana, the new personal assistant in Windows Phone 8.1