Many of you are aware that one of the biggest new features in Windows Phone 8.1 is the new voice assistant called Cortana. With mainly Apple’s Siri and Google Now dominating the voice assistant market for several years now, Microsoft joined a little late but still thinks it could beat both Google and Apple.
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In an interview with BI Partner Group program manager at Microsoft Marcus Ash revealed why Microsoft thinks Cortana is better then Siri. Here is a round up of the most interesting things Marcus said in the interview:
Asking the right Questions: Microsoft has decided to interview many personal assistants of famous people to mainly try to resolve the issue of “if you don’t ask the right questions, then you’re not going to get the right data”. In order for a virtual assistant to work, it needs the right information, according to Marcus, Microsoft has worked really hard on making the questions Cortana asks you useful and get as many data as it needs with asking as little as possible.
Its all about Trust: Giving personal information to a computer through voice can be something many users find weird or refuse to do due to lack of trust. Cortana is build on trust and relies on it to work properly, similar to asking the right questions, If the person doesn’t trust Cortana, then she won’t be able to do her job effectively because the information she has will be limited.
Cortana has personality, Google now doesn’t: Microsoft doesn’t really seem to see Google Now as the big competitor, as it thinks that Cortana is way ahead of Google Now because its voice search has personality while Google Now is just “to get you quickly and efficiently to Google’s services”
Cortana is smarter then Siri: While again Microsoft says that Cortana has personality and Siri doesn’t and can only be used to do several tasks and answer some standard questions, something else Microsoft says Cortana does better then Siri is choosing the best answer for the user. Depending on the question and who is asking, Cortana will use its “notebook” to look at the best fitting answer for that particular person.
