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 Microsoft has been running its "personal assistant" Cortana on its
Windows phones for a year, and will put the new version on the
desktop with the arrival of Windows 10 this autumn. Later, Cortana
will be available as a standalone app, usable on phones and tablets
powered by Apple Inc's iOS and Google Inc's Android, people familiar
with the project said.
"This kind of technology, which can read and understand email, will
play a central role in the next roll out of Cortana, which we are
working on now for the fall time frame," said Eric Horvitz, managing
director of Microsoft Research and a part of the Einstein project,
in an interview at the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters.
The plan to put Cortana on machines running software from rivals
such as Apple and Google, as well as the Einstein project, have not
been reported. Cortana is the name of an artificial intelligence
character in the video game series "Halo."
They represent a new front in CEO Satya Nadella's battle to sell
Microsoft software on any device or platform, rather than trying to
force customers to use Windows. Success on rivals' platforms could
create new markets and greater relevance for the company best known
for its decades-old operating system.
The concept of 'artificial intelligence' is broad, and mobile phones
and computers already show dexterity with spoken language and
sifting through emails for data, for instance.
Still, Microsoft believes its work on speech recognition, search and
machine learning will let it transform its digital assistant into
the first intelligent 'agent' which anticipates users needs. By
comparison, Siri is advertised mostly as responding to requests.
Google's mobile app, which doesn’t have a name like Siri or Cortana,
already offers some limited predictive information 'cards' based on
what it thinks the user wants to know.
Microsoft has tried to create digital assistants before, without
success. Microsoft Bob, released in 1995, was supposed to make using
a computer easy, but ended up being the butt of jokes. The Office
Assistant nicknamed 'Clippy' suffered a similar fate a few years
later.
"We're defining the competitive landscape... of who can provide the
most supportive services that make life easier, keep track of
things, that complement human memory in a way that helps us get
things done," said Horvitz.
Outside his door stands "The Assistant", a monitor showing a woman's
face that can converse with visitors, has access to Horvitz's
calendar and can book meetings.
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On his desktop, Horvitz runs 'Lifebrowser', a program that stores
everything from appointments to photos and uses machine learning to
identify the important moments. A keyword search for his university
professor instantly brings up photos and video from the last time
they met.
Cortana could tell a mobile phone user when to leave for the
airport, days after it read an email and realized the user was
planning a flight. It would automatically check flight status,
determine where the phone is located using GPS, and checking traffic
conditions.
None of the individual steps are a breakthrough, but creating an
artificial intelligence that can stitch together the processes marks
a breakthrough in usefulness, Microsoft says.
Rivals are on the same track. Google's latest mobile app uses the
predictive power generated from billions of searches to work out
what a user is doing, what they are interested in, and sending
relevant information, such as when a favorite sports team is playing
next.
Apple is also pushing Siri, which uses Microsoft's Bing search
engine in the background, into new areas with its CarPlay and
HomeKit platforms, as well as the recently unveiled Apple Watch.
The key to Cortana's success will be knowing where a user is, what
time it is, and what they are trying to do. Albert Einstein's work
on the relationship between space and time gave rise to Microsoft's
secret project name, said Horvitz.
"Einstein was brilliant about space and time," he said. "It’s using
brilliance about space and time generally in our agents."
(Reporting by Bill Rigby, editing by Peter Henderson and John
Pickering)
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