In a support document published today, Microsoft announced that, at least for Windows, its virtual assistant Cortana will eventually cease to exist. Starting later this year, Cortana standalone, which you probably don’t even know is installed on your PC, won’t be supported.
The announcement of Windows Copilot, which was demonstrated just a week ago at Microsoft’s Build 2023 conference, follows this news. Curiously, when I conversed with Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman after the lauch, I was told expressly, plainly, that Windows Copilot was not supplanting Cortana, and that those fill two totally various needs.
Microsoft mentions Windows Copilot and mentions that you will still be able to access AI experiences in Windows 11 in the support document announcing the Cortana era’s end. In addition, there is the brand-new Bing, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and voice access in Windows, the latter of which enables voice control of your PC.
For Cortana, the signs have been there for some time. It first came out in 2014 as a virtual assistant for Windows Phone 8.1, competing with Siri from Apple. With Windows 10’s desktop launch in 2015, it began to feel like Microsoft was putting Cortana everywhere. Similar to what we are seeing with Copilot at the moment, it began to appear in applications like Office and others. There were also third-party Cortana devices, like the Johnson Controls Glas thermostat and the Harman Kardon Invoke smart speaker, which are no longer supported.
Microsoft began to backtrack shortly after it became clear that Cortana would not be able to compete with Amazon Alexa. Cortana was stripped out of Windows, turning into an independent application as opposed to something you found in the taskbar. For two or three years at this point, it’s only sort of lived as an application on Windows 11, with no news showing up about any sorts of new elements.
The Bing Chat and Copilot era has arrived. If you haven’t heard Microsoft messaging lately, the company is pushing AI hard. Additionally, rather than utilizing a basic voice assistant like Cortana, it is moving forward with GPT-4.
Microsoft made the point that Cortana is still available in Outlook mobile, Teams mobile, Teams display, and Teams rooms. However, if you have never used it on those products before, it probably isn’t the best time to create a work flow around it.