14 DAY TRIAL // Cortana is often referred to by Microsoft as the company’s “personal assistant,” with Redmond explaining that this feature comes to Windows 10 devices with features that can offer personalized experience to every single user out there.
And while Cortana can indeed learn new things about you, Microsoft is looking into making the whole experience even more personal, and a recent patent provides us with a glimpse into the way the company wants to achieve this goal
A new feature called “PROVIDING PERSONALIZED GREETINGS ON A DIGITAL ASSISTANT” explains how exactly Cortana can become a more personal digital assistant by providing personalized greetings to each owner. Using this, Cortana will no longer provide the same greeting twice, but at the same time adapt its lines to every user.
As the company explains in the patent description, the goal is “to mimic a human experience with the user and providing the same greeting to the user twice in one day is not typical of how the user would be greeted by a human.”
Keeping an eye on everything you do
Basically, Cortana would thus be capable of greeting you in different ways that would adapt to the information the digital assistant has access to, so it can tell you happy birthday on your anniversary or include information that’s relevant to you, such as sports and weather forecasts.
“If the user accesses his/her laptop in the morning, and his/her mobile device in the afternoon on the day of the user’ s birthday, the system would know to now greet the user with ‘Happy Birthday!’ both times, but rather to greet the user the first time with ‘Happy Birthday!’ and greet the user the second time with ‘Hope you are having a wonderful day!’” the patent explains.
Microsoft explains that Cortana would still require access to track emails, calendar entries, and searches in order to determine what’s more important to you and adapt accordingly.
“With this, a personalized greeting that is directed to sports may be ranked higher than one directed to the weather. The information used for ranking could be static or dynamic. Even further, two or more personalized greetings could be combined and presented to the user as a single greeting,” the company says.
As MSPU notes, the patent was filed in April this year, so it might be included in Cortana at some point in the future, possible with the arrival of the Creators Update in early 2017.