14 DAY TRIAL // If you ever thought that talking to your computer was very weird, you should probably think about that again, as Microsoft could soon implement its personal assistant Cortana on PCs as well.
Joe Belfiore, who's now in charge of the Windows Phone team at Microsoft, held an AMA session on Reddit to get in touch with those who have already installed Windows Phone 8.1 and find their thoughts on the new OS update aimed at smartphones.
Among others, Belfiore also hinted that, at some point, Cortana could also make it to the PC, but he refused to provide any kind of details as to when this might actually happen.
“Nothing specific to announce, but Cortana herself is always telling us she's a fan of PCs herself. :),” he said when asked whether the personal assistant might indeed be launched on the PC.
Interestingly, Microsoft has recently updated the Windows 8.1 Bing Smart Search tool with options to help users search for information using not only keywords, but entire written phrases such as “I want to uninstall an app” to launch the app uninstaller in Control Panel.
Microsoft says that this is actually a way to help users who are unsure how to reach a specific Windows feature, so by simply typing what they want to do, Windows 8.1 can lend them a hand.
“Have you ever tried to get something done on your device but you weren’t exactly sure what you were looking for? For instance, how do I take a screenshot or how do set-up a printer? Based on the most common tasks people perform on Windows 8, we are taking steps to allow Smart Search to showcase results based on natural language understanding,” the company said.
Cortana would do basically the same thing, with the big different that the feature lineup would also include a speech recognition engine that would allow you to talk to it just like with a personal assistant. At the same time, it could also help you perform basic tasks, such as posting to Twitter or setting up reminders.
Windows 9, the next major version of Windows, could be the first OS release for the desktop to come with Cortana, as the second update for Windows 8.1 coming this year is more likely to focus on PC improvements than on new features. Of course, take all of these with a grain of salt until we have a confirmation from Microsoft.