Almost a decade after their mainstream introduction, voice assistants are not where they were supposed to be. Cortana, Microsoft’s attempt at a me-too technology nobody really wanted, was phased out of Windows in its latest edition. Going forward, it won’t be built into IoT devices; however, not many devices have it in the first place. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella declared in 2016 that “bots are the new apps.” Cortana, however, did not live up to the hype. In Windows 10, it lost the ability to do most of the expected voice assistant things, i.e., turn lights on and off, play music, etc. Windows 11 saw Cortana all but cease to exist as we knew it. “They were all dumb as a rock,” Nadella told the Financial Times. He added that voice assistants would not work, whether it was Alexa, Cortana, or Google. The Microsoft boss can afford to be blunt with his observation. With ChatGPT’s ability to understand natural language and respond to queries, voice assistants were left looking stupid. Microsoft has switched strategies and is not focusing on generative conversational AI programs like Bing Search, hoping it will achieve the accolades Cortana didn’t. Whether the new Bing Search will be successful remains to be seen.
