14 DAY TRIAL // Another day, another sign that Cortana is stepping away from consumers, instead becoming a digital assistant that’s only focused on businesses and productivity.
After Microsoft announced a few days ago that Cortana would be losing some consumer features, a new report today reveals that the company internally refers to the digital assistant using a different name, and there’s a chance the same moniker would be used for the production version as well.
In other words, Cortana could eventually be renamed, and according to Petri, it might be baptized Microsoft 365 Assistant.
The naming makes sense given Microsoft 365 is Redmond’s effort for increased productivity in the enterprise, so Microsoft 365 Assistant would just be the logical choice going forward.
Cortana consumer features
Of course, Microsoft is yet to confirm these changes, but in the long term, it really shouldn’t be a big surprise if the company gives up on the Cortana moniker for its assistant.
Microsoft itself explains that Cortana is now part of the Microsoft 365 suite, especially given its new focus.
“AI in Microsoft 365 is driving a significant shift in how people interact with Microsoft 365 applications. Our experiences personalize and adapt to you, support you and help amplify your skills. You can see this shift in the personalized experiences we are enabling through Cortana, your personal productivity assistant in Microsoft 365. Cortana helps you stay on top of your day, save time and do your best work,” the company says.
Cortana will no longer be able to control music or a connected home, as Microsoft is giving up on a series of consumer-oriented features as part of this increased focus on productivity and businesses. Furthermore, Cortana will no longer be supported on Windows 10 versions that are out of support, and the digital assistant will be pulled from Microsoft Launcher on Android.