While there are over 150 million phone devices with digital assistants like Siri and Google Assistant, and quickly growing smart speaker devices with Amazon’s Alexa on board, there’s another device that dwarfs these numbers in comparison. While they are considered voice-first devices, there are over a half billion Windows 10 devices (including Xboxes) with Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortana, on board listening out for your questions and requests. And throw in pieces like Office 365, Bing and LinkedIn, Cortana has a lot of potential data and interactions to draw on in order to help people get things done in a much more efficient and contextually relevant manner – both for personal and business reasons.
Christi Olson, Microsoft’s Head of Evangelism for Search, discusses how this lineup of services and platforms is coming together using AI and conversational interfaces to transform how people work, as well as how they’ll engage with customers.