TECH: Big change for Windows 10’s Cortana assistant

Big change for Windows 10’s Cortana assistant

If you’ve got Windows 10 you’ll be familiar with Microsoft’s AI digital assistant Cortana. Taken from Microsoft’s first major gaming franchise Halo, Cortana is Microsoft’s version Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, amazon’s Alexa. Thanks to the Cortana character in the Halo series, however, Cortana is the only AI assistant to have a physical representation of her likeness. This isn’t the case in Windows 10 where Cortana is represented as the search bar next to Start button. Reports are saying, however, that this might be about to change.

A new report says that Microsoft plan to move Cortana from the search bar to the Action Center, which makes sense. Cortana is already taking care of a lot of the notifications that show up in the Action Center so it could prove to be a more suitable homeland for the AI assistant. Microsoft are also developing a new chat based user interface for Cortana that will also be located in the Action Center.

This change will have two impacts on your Windows 10 experience. The first is that it will remove Cortana from Windows search. There was little to need for Microsoft to integrate an AI assistant into the Windows search function and people haven’t been crazy about it since they did. Microsoft know that people don’t like talking to their PCs so the second big impact is that a new chat based UI with text input should garner more interaction between Windows 10 users and Cortana.

According to Windows Central, the latest Redstone 4 Insider Preview features a change that puts Cortana’s proactive content in the Action Center. This means that we could be seeing Cortana moving home when Redstone 5 hits towards the end of 2018. If it does, we’ll have Windows search back, improved functionality for Cortana, and a tasty little Cortana logo in the Action Center. en.softonic