What is Cortana? Overview of voice assistant capabilities

The article describes what Cortana is, what it is used for and considers some of the features of this virtual assistant.

The Digital Age

Every year, digital technologies are developing more and more, and what several years ago seemed to be fiction or existed in the form of concepts, is being realized. True, not always successful, a vivid example of this - Google Glass, - "smart glasses" with elements of virtual reality.

Especially popular in recent years have become various virtual assistants with the likeness of artificial intelligence, for example, Siri - available to users of Apple products. And for quite a long time the competitors in this area have not had an "apple" company. Of course, for phones based on "android" and other operating systems, third-party developers released different virtual assistants, however, they required a long setup and the quality did not differ much.

But with the release of Windows 10, everything has changed, and now Apple has a significant competitor in this area, and many users have already tried a virtual assistant like Cortana. So what is Cortana, what are its capabilities and how to incorporate it? We will talk about this.

Gaming past

Cortana is a voice virtual assistant with some elements of AI (artificial intelligence), developed by Microsoft. In the future, it is also planned to release it on devices running iOS. It was first shown to the general public during one of the conferences held on April 2, 2014.

And, by the way, this name was given in honor of one of the heroines of the Halo series of computer games, and she was voiced by the same actress who was doing it in the game. So now we know what Cortana is.

Capabilities

Cortana was developed as a universal virtual assistant, which can greatly facilitate the search for information on the Internet and general management of a computer or other digital device. One of its key features is that it can anticipate the needs and requirements of the user.

If necessary, it can give full access to a number of personal data - address book, email, history of search queries and more. All such information Cortana will use to facilitate interaction with the user and increase their "independence". So we sorted out the question of what Cortana is.

In the future, it will be called by the usual "Start" button, all search queries and so on can be entered either manually or via voice commands. And the interaction is supposed both at the level of the usual Internet surfing, and on the basis of personal files. For example, you can set a command to find one or another folder, delete the directory, start another program, system settings and much more.

The developers have tried to maximally bring Cortana to the level of human perception: she can joke, maintain conversations for the time being a simple level, and much more. Also, in addition to searching and managing the computer, its function includes monitoring the current information, for example, it is able to remind about the upcoming meeting, the birthday of someone close, advise you to change clothes if the weather forecast is unfavorable, etc. Now we know what Cortana is in "Windus 10". As you can see, this is a very convenient virtual assistant, and the developers promise to constantly supplement its capabilities and the level of "intelligence"

Restrictions

However, not all will be able to use this wonderful system, it does not work with users under 13 years of age. This is determined by the date of birth, which is specified in the profile of the Microsoft account. But this, unfortunately, does not end there.

Often one can meet the question of how to include Cortana. And here everything is not so simple. The fact is that so far the system supports only a few languages, and Russian, unfortunately, is not among them. But not everything is so sad, you can still run it.

To do this, in the computer settings you need to change the region to the one that Cortana supports, for example, the US. After that, you need to download a special language pack for the selected region in the "Language and Region" and then select the supported language in the "Voice Recognition" section, in this case it's English. Now we know how to turn on Cortana. After all the settings you need to go to the search settings and activate Cortana by switching the corresponding button.

After all this, it will work, but, of course, only English speech will be recognized.

Shooting

One of the negative aspects that clouded the joy of users from having such an assistant is that Cortana refuses to work when the telemetry collection and user personal data are off, such as the Internet search history, voice requests and so on.

But if you still started it, how to use Cortana? Everything is very simple. After the first start, she will start the configuration, she will offer to specify her powers and will acquaint herself with the short list of commands.