Microsoft's highly anticipated Siri-like voice assistant Cortana will enter Beta on Lumia in April and will be voiced by Halo's Jen Taylor
Windows 8.1 users might be able to play Halo’s Master Chief as sources have revealed that Microsoft’s highly anticipated voice assistant, codenamed Cortana will enter Beta on Lumia in April, and will be available for developers in the U.S at that time.
Now that is interesting, but here’s the real deal – Cortana will be voiced by Jen Taylor, the same AI character who voiced Halo’s Cortana in the game. Let’s hope Cortana is her sassy self on phones, just like she was in the Halo series. Interestingly, the April release of Windows 8.1 update, in turn clashes with Microsoft’s BUILD 2014 conference.
According to our source MSFTnerd, who has not cited any of it’s own sources in the report, says Cortana will make its way to other devices after Spring. To start off, it will come in the iPhone Bing app starting this fall, though only in the U.S.
Next up will be Xbox One and Windows PC users, Cortana will be making her way in 2015 with the Threshold update, followed by rest of the world, mainly targetting English speaking regions. However, its still a bit puzzling as to what sort of Kinect integration Microsoft has in mind forXbox One, as AI features are easier to replicate on Windows 8.1 computers.
Early reports on Cortana surfaced way back in September, when CEO Steve Ballmer wrote:
“Our machine-learning infrastructure will understand people’s needs and what is available in the world, and will provide information and assistance. We will be great at anticipating needs in people’s daily routines and providing insight and assistance when they need it.”
However, ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley also adds that eventually, Cortana will be the core experience integrating future version of Windows, Windows Phone along with the Xbox.
Unitil we hear Cortana on our own Windows Phone, we are going to take these rumours as rumours.
Source: MSFTnerd