Microsoft looking for engineers to build new capabilities

Feb 18, 2020 05:03 GMT  ·  By

While Microsoft has slowly made Cortana a second-class citizen of Windows 10, the company still doesn’t want to give up on the concept that lets you control the operating system with your voice.

And by the looks of things, not only that Microsoft isn’t planning to abandon this technology, but it’s working on giving it a boost with the release of Windows 10X.

According to a recent report, Microsoft is now looking for engineers that would help it create a new voice control feature for Windows 10X.

Accessibility improvements?

The company obviously doesn’t share too many details, but it does say that “this is a new application,” so the system would be separated for Cortana, at least at first. On the other hand, if the voice control capabilities are connected to Cortana, this could bring a substantial boost in terms of functionality to Microsoft’s digital assistant, which has until now been lagging behind rivals like Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant.

At the same time, Microsoft could very well develop the new voice control system as an accessibility feature, so Cortana could eventually evolve in many other ways than initially thought.

“Since this is a new application, the number of coding challenges is high: taking advantage of conceptual services for voice command and control, identifying interesting components in the context of the application, interacting with the entire desktop, interacting with 10X OS in new ways within the scope of security and integrity,” the job ad cited by the quoted source means.

Windows 10X is Microsoft’s new operating system specifically aimed at dual-screen and foldable devices. It’s projected to launch later this year and power Microsoft’s own Surface Neo, which is scheduled to go live in the holiday season of 2020. Windows 10X will also introduce several new features, including a revised Start menu and an updated Action Center.