Microsoft Has Killed Cortana

Why has Microsoft killed off the Cortana voice assistant that was once a fixture in Windows?

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[christophermboya]

Clearly they shut Cortana down because of AI rampancy, its been more than 7 years. Microsoft is obviously following Halo lore

[JoeBob]

I used to use Cortana a bit back in the day, it was especially handy for playing music, you could just say "Hey Cortana, play Metallica" and it would do it. And it was handy for giving you the weather and stuff.
But the big problem is that they never improved it or integrated it properly into Windows, like you couldn't tell it to run a virus scan, open a particular folder, uninstall a program, etc.
So it was kind of a pointless gimmick really.

[jack.h]

They could have merged their new Bing chatbot and Cortana. IDK it seems like it could have been awesome to use Cortana's voice as text-to-speech for GPT4 and solidified her as an AI on par with or better than Siri

[richardbeckenbaugh]

I didn’t think much of voice assistance until I had my arm paralyzed by a stroke. Now I use Siri and Cortana a lot. They don’t seem to mind that my voice is a little slurred, unlike humans. It wasn’t until I became handicapped that I understood how much those programs make using a computer possible for stroke victims.

[saragl]

"Can you imagine Windows without Cortana?" I remember the times before Cortana

[testerpt]

funny thing is that Microsoft always justifies its changes as it's listening to it's costumers.

[Koshzor]

Cortana on Windows Server was the strangest thing ever. Don't know anyone who needed it there

[Andrew_M_Ward]

All studies on voice assistants conclude that people generally don't like them and quickly stop using them... this is universal across all voice assistants

[kyle]

Cortana has the best voice and the best backstory of any of them.

[AdianBlack]

Yes, it had nothing to do with the fact that literally nobody used it and virtually everyone hated it and spent hours learning how to disable and uninstall the dubious "feature."

[riden]

Imma be honest, I feel like now would have been a perfect time to relaunch a re-worked Cortana assistant powered by chat gpt and including an automatic text-to-speech component with Cortana’s voice, would be the closest thing to a real-life Cortana and possibly the coolest and best ai assistant if any tech company, seriously missed opportunity

[bigmanben]

i always remove cortana anyway, that shit annoying as fuck

[tallpaul]

I've never really used Cortana. I currently have it disabled. I don't use Alexa, Siri, or Google's assistant. I can understand the convenience of having a conversation with electronic devices with no hands. But, I have noticed when those things are enabled, the adverts on web sites seem to be geared to things it has 'heard' being said.

[thepopmanbrad]

i remembered windows 10 and i was like "omg cortana is so cool" and then like 1 day later i forgot about it and just go this annoying search bar that i got rid off they really really really should have integrated cortana with co pilot and advertising it in edge bing and windows being improved that would have put them on top of the voice assistant game as copilot in edge is insanely good you can you have conversations cross reference and more and im super hyped for windows 11 co pilot but they missed the mark with cortana they should have really upgraded cortana not finally let her die :(

[pyrosnineActual]

The worst thing for me is that Cortana really shined in Windows Mixed Reality VR devices, like my HP Reverb G2, where typing out things is hard, but being able to ask for the time, set timers, or ask Cortana to search for walkthrough stuff in game was useful.

[Thrashman]

I feel like I am maybe part of small number of people who never use AI assistants on any of my devices. I find it's much simpler to tap, type, text, click, or scroll to get whatever I need accomplished. Voice assistants are useful for those who need them, but for me they're more cumbersome than simply clicking a couple of buttons.

[MrBlueBurd]

'who can imagine phones without siri, google assistant, etc'.

Me. I can imagine a much better world without all of this nonsense.

[TheStarSquid]

I kinda wished they kept the Cortana name and gave it to things like Copilot

[qutuz]

I actually really liked Cortana. I thought it was the most natural out of all the voice assistants. I liked the interface more, and I appreciated that sit can be used on my laptop.

Its a shame its going away, but tbh, Microsoft seems to be the one winning the AI race with their integrations. Google will probably catch up quickly though.

[Guaseth]

Can't wait until they release the next assistant and call it "The Weapon".