14 DAY TRIAL // Cortana is no longer a first-class citizen of Windows 10, but this doesn’t necessarily mean Microsoft wants to kill off the digital assistant.
Instead, Cortana is getting enterprise capabilities, and today, the Redmond-based software giant announced new features that would make the assistant even more advanced for customers.
First and foremost, Microsoft Outlook for iOS would receive conversation AI technology powered by Cortana, all with the purpose of allowing a voice forward assistive experience when using the email app.
“We will soon roll out the first Microsoft 365 conversational AI capability in Outlook across email, calendar, and search. With this update, Cortana will be able to orchestrate your voice input with on-screen experiences to simplify your personal productivity and organization. You will be able to manage your time and schedule events and meetings in Outlook, add participants to meeting invitations, and compose messages using your voice, speaking with the language you use every day. By harnessing the full power of human voice, Microsoft AI, and the intelligent technology of the Microsoft Graph, we are starting our journey to enable Cortana to learn about you and your preferences in grammar and recognize your voice nuances, accent, and dialect,” Microsoft explains.
Cortana in Microsoft Teams evolving as well
In Microsoft Teams, Cortana will be supported in more languages too. Right now, the digital assistant only works in English in the United States, but Microsoft says it’s also adding support for English in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India.
Users in all these regions will be able to use Cortana for a wide variety of tasks in Microsoft Teams, including making calls, joining meetings, sending messages, and sharing files, all using voice commands.
The new capabilities would be available in the Teams mobile app on both iPhone and Android, but a specific ETA as to when they would go live isn’t yet available.