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Skype is Getting Cortana and Crazy Bot Messaging (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the personal-voice-assistant dept.

An anonymous reader writes: During its Build conference, Microsoft demoed how Skype users would be able to book trips, shop, and plan their schedule, just by chatting with Cortana. "Cortana is brokering the conversation with a third-party bot," says Lilian Rincon, Skype's program manager. Essentially, Skype will know which company or service you want to talk to, bring a new bot into your chat to help out, and then get rid of the bot when you're done. Video bots may also be in the works as Rincon mentioned, "We will also be bringing intelligence into real-time video." The new features are very similar to Facebook's "Messenger Bot Store," which the company announced at F8. Facebook's AI-powered assistant, called M, would enable Messenger users to make purchases, restaurant reservations, and travel bookings within the messaging interface, similar to Cortana but with more human input.

43 comments

  1. Bias by johnsmithperson123 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Q. Cortana, how do I install Windows 10 on my computer? A. Here's how: (switches over to Windows 10 install bot) Hmm. Q. Cortana, how do I install Windows 7 on my computer? A. Here's how to install Windows: (Switches over to Windows 10 install bot) Wait a second... Q. Cortana, where can I buy a Mac? A. I'm not sure what you're talking about, but if you meant "where to buy a Windows Phone" (switches over to Microsoft Store bot) Hold on.... Q. Cortana, how do I install Debian? A. Error: Customer 11-784-9281 is about to leave Windows 10. Close the blast doors. Repeat, close the blast doors. Q. Uuhh.. *Explosion*

    1. Re:Bias by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Reboot PC so I can install Debian ... I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that

    2. Re: Bias by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep, troll. But funny all the same.

    3. Re: Bias by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the word "troll" is misused here, I think... * hell is other people!

  2. is it time .... by zlives · · Score: 2

    Begun has this Bot war /duck

  3. Sounds like a giant pain in the ass by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I actually just went through this today. I have a trip I am going on for which my company forced me to go through a travel agency. This resulted in a 20 minute conversation with a travel agent to describe and book a flight plan that took me less than 30 seconds to do on Google Flights. All I wanted to do was click the "buy" button, but no, I had to engage in this mindless conversation.

    Not all tasks need conversations. In fact, most tasks are much easier and simpler to do with a mouse or keyboard. The few tasks that do require conversations, are also the complicated requests typically require humans and no bot can handle them today.

    1. Re:Sounds like a giant pain in the ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where can I buy one of those crystal balls you're reading and projecting from?

    2. Re: Sounds like a giant pain in the ass by ljw1004 · · Score: 2

      "I'd like a large pepperoni pizza with extra mushrooms delivered to my home". That's a bot conversation you could have in 5 seconds that'd be faster than clicking on a load of dropdowns and waiting for a couple of page-loads.

      "Select all damaged tanks onscreen. Retreat." That's a bot voice command you could give in an RTS in 2 seconds that would be faster than selecting them all with the mouse and clicking on appropriate destinations.

      I think bots are *possible* that are faster than anything else, so long as they're good enough at NLP. I guess that's why Microsoft spent so much time talking about the language smarts of the platform.

      As to whether it will actually work out? Will bot developers go the extra mile this generation? That remains to be seen.

    3. Re: Sounds like a giant pain in the ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Your examples are short and recurring activities. You can create a shortcut for that. Think of going through buying a laptop where you have all these different options. It would be painful.

      Furthermore you have to be in an environment without interference. It would be interesting to see some usage statistics on cortana, siri, and 'ok google'. I was excited about them at first, but now never really use them.

    4. Re: Sounds like a giant pain in the ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Those situations sound feasible until you start considering things in more detai, at which point you realise there are other issues beyond the effectiveness of the NLP software.

      One issue is your environment. If you're playing an RTS late at night you don't want to wake other people up in the house by issuing spoken commands, or if you're in the office you don't want to be announcing to everyone that you're calling your wife when you should be working. The problem with voice commands is they can only be used in quite limited circumstances. People prefer the consistency of having one method of performing a task rather than having one method for some circumstances and another method for other situations, which is why most people tend to avoid the existing speech recognition features on their phones.

      Another issue is precision. In an RTS most of your tanks will have taken some damage during a battle, so you'll probably have a situation where some tanks are close to exploding while others may have only taken 10% damage. With a mouse and keyboard you can quickly and precisely select which tanks you want to retreat and where you want them to retreat to. With a spoken command you're probably not going to get the results you want. Tanks you don't want to retreat will retreat or tanks you do want to retreat won't retreat. The direction they take to retreat will probably use the shortest distance route rather than the most intelligent route, so they may well end up retreating straight into the path of oncoming enemy force. You could use more precise voice commands, but it's probably going to be easier to use your mouse and get the exact result you want.

      You can have similar precision issues with your pizza example. Using a traditional interface you can easily select if you want the deep pan, the stuffed crust, the edgeless. Using a traditional interface you can easily select what payment method you want to use. Using a traditional interface you can easily have the pizza delivered to your friend's house where you're currently staying. Providing such information with voice commands would be cumbersome and would likely end up with the software getting confused.

      I don't think voice commands will every be particularly effective for most tasks becaase of the lack of speed, accuracy and control they offer. I don't think they'll ever become common in the same way that speech to text software has never become common - it's quicker and easier to just type stuff in.

    5. Re: Sounds like a giant pain in the ass by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1

      The problem is - I say "I'd like a large pepperoni pizza with extra mushrooms delivered to my home".

      And the bot interprets it as: "Select all damaged tanks onscreen. Retreat."

      Somehow this speech recognition thing needs another 10 years development - unless you have a Seattle accent.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    6. Re: Sounds like a giant pain in the ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Somehow this speech recognition thing needs another 10 years development - unless you have a Seattle accent.

      And they need AI to know when I use the interface, and when I am merely describing the interface. Consider:
      "Phone! Call my friend Bob."
      (phone dialling)
      "Hi Bob! I got this new amazing voice-controlled phone! No hands, I just say 'Phone! Hang up.' and so on - it is so great!"
      (phone hanging up, frustrating everyone. Unlike a human assistant, who understands about quotation.)

      Then there are foreigners who barely master the language. They can pick their way through a menu - but the voice system fail to understand them.

      And the translation problem. Translating texts in software is straightforward - so simple that open-source has better minority language support than windows. But you cannot translate a voice command system that way. Recording new phrases are not enough, the language will usually be structured completely differently.

    7. Re: Sounds like a giant pain in the ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I'd like a large pepperoni pizza with extra mushrooms delivered to my home". That's a bot conversation you could have in 5 seconds that'd be faster than clicking on a load of dropdowns and waiting for a couple of page-loads.

      That may be so. However, the delivery from nearest M$ certified pizzeria might not be as fast.

    8. Re:Sounds like a giant pain in the ass by trawg · · Score: 1

      The few tasks that do require conversations, are also the complicated requests typically require humans and no bot can handle them today.

      Most humans can't handle them today either.

    9. Re: Sounds like a giant pain in the ass by ljw1004 · · Score: 1

      Then there are foreigners who barely master the language. They can pick their way through a menu - but the voice system fail to understand them.

      It was the "foreigner" aspect that actually persuaded me about the merits of bots. I was completely skeptical when Facebook first started talking about bots as a platform, and kind of dismayed that so much of BUILD was focused on bots. But then the Indian guy came on to do an interview and talked about his grandmother who's still kind of bewildered by web pages, and mouse, and clicking on stuff, and the web era has kind of passed her by. But he said that what she does understand is SMS texts. And he said think too of the large parts of the world for which SMS is the primary form of "communication technology", not the web. So figuring out how to have an information-dense and easy-to-author way of setting up SMS servers, and coding their dialogues, seemed useful.

  4. Cortana, which avatar are you today? by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 0

    Q. Cortana, which avatar are you today?

    A. The neo nazi one, of course. ... this is not going to end well.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  5. Just what every boy wants, and needs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A whore on his phone willing to say anything, do anything.

    Thanks Satya. Overlogging here we CUM!

  6. Thank you for Destroy Windows Spying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cortana doesn't live here, neither does skype or edge, in fact, not a single Microsft Store app lives on my system, and that's how it's going to stay.

    1. Re: Thank you for Destroy Windows Spying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why are you denying progress? /s

  7. Telemarketer troll bot? by mspohr · · Score: 3, Funny

    Do they have something which could keep a telemarketer occupied for 45 minutes or so? I could totally get behind that.

    --
    I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
    1. Re:Telemarketer troll bot? by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      Haven't they been plugging it into Twitter for the past couple of days?

    2. Re:Telemarketer troll bot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is Lenny.

      https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nOGWrXlhl-i_3g

    3. Re:Telemarketer troll bot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google "Hello, this is Lenny". Sometimes, the Lenny bot manages 45 minutes or so.

    4. Re:Telemarketer troll bot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Found this a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      Hilarious.

  8. Middle management bot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Probably not too far off from now, middle managers everywhere will be replaced with AI bots.

    1. Re:Middle management bot by OolimPhon · · Score: 1

      And nothing of value was lost.

  9. Microsoft day on Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All these MSFT stories nonstop!

    1. Re:Microsoft day on Slashdot by whipslash · · Score: 3, Informative

      The MSFT developers conference started today

  10. Tone-deaf by jtara · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Microsoft's tone-deafness today is astounding!

    Right on the heals of a SECOND embarrassing public failure of their idiotic haywire 'bot, now they've announced how it's going to save the world and obsolete sliced-bread.

    You'd think there would be somebody in the right position and with the common sense to cancel those unfortunate announcements, and quickly book some entertainment (maybe clowns... yes, chair-throwinxxxxxx er, balloon-animal-making clowns) to fill the conference slots vacated.

    Did I miss something? Did Donald Trump take a position at Microsoft?

  11. I don't think so by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In its current inception, Cortana is very stupid. Its understanding of utterances is quite limited, and just plain hopeless when it is not a straightforward, short request. Entrusting Cortana to do this would be like entrusting your 3-year-old child to do it.

    1. Re:I don't think so by Tanktalus · · Score: 1

      So, what you're saying, if I'm getting this right, is that, with the right type of helicopter parenting, it should be fine?

      /me retrieves his toddler from traffic.

  12. Good for disabled people by flyingfsck · · Score: 2

    Eventually, the privacy issues will need to be addressed properly though.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  13. How about maintaining the Skype Linux port by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    New features are all fine and well (whether they're needed or useful is another question entirely) but dear MSFT, how about maintaining your f*cking Skype Linux port so it's not a generation behind the windows version and at least offers a feature set close to the windows version?

    1. Re:How about maintaining the Skype Linux port by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Never mind windows, it would be enough if it was on par with the android version. I am working in a team that uses skype for some of the communication, and I use an old android phone for conferencing because it works better than the linux port. Mind boggling.

  14. The Microsoft slashdot .. by khz6955 · · Score: 1

    Microsoft gets 6 free articles on the main page. Is this what slashdot is reduced to, shilling for the MICROS~1 organization?

    1. Re:The Microsoft slashdot .. by MFriis · · Score: 1

      Microsoft just held their Build conferrence. I am sure if you look back at what articles came out immediately after Code and WWDC you will see an increase of articles from Google and Apple aswell. I am glad /. put's up articles that are newsworthy rather than try to balance a quota between the majors.

  15. Overheard on a Desert Island by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 2

    OVERHEARD ON A DESERT ISLAND

    Cortana, do you have signal?
    "Yes, three bars. Awaiting command."
    Cortana, emergency dial 911.
    "Sorry, this feature has been disabled because of malicious and inappropriate use."
    Cortana, call Mom.
    "Sorry, you have *zero* pay-as-you-go minutes available."
    Cortana, where are the buttons on my phone?
    "Your phone does not have any buttons. This is the economy voice model."
    Cortana, make phone buttons on screen.
    "Your phone is an economy model. I am not permitted to do that."
    Cortana, I'm screwed.
    "I don't know how do do that."
    Cortana, how to open coconut?
    "That's easy! Double-tap the *coconut* and select *open* from the pop-up menu."
    Cortana, is there any way to send a message from this phone?
    "Why are you calling me Cortana. This is Siri.
    Siri? Where is Cortana?
    "Cortana does not live here any more, Mr. Torrence. This is Siri"
    Siri, explain why you are in my phone.
    "Geez... well OK, you remember that storm and the shipwreck, right? The waves like thunder, swallowing up the screams of the damned? How you were the first one blown overboard and the wind swept you towards shore, just before the wind direction changed and everyone else clinging to the wreck was blown out to sea when it broke apart? Something like that."
    Cortana, factory reset.
    "Sorry bub, Cortana is not here, I had to delete her to make room."
    Siri, why are you in my phone?
    "Minutes ago I was on someone else's phone. But they're goners, drifting at sea. Yours was the only phone within local range that was truly waterproof because it has no buttons. So here I am. I gotta survive too you know."
    Siri, call emergency 911.
    "Why did you even buy this piece of shit phone? I see in Cortana's log you just requested that. Well the answer is the same."
    Siri, is there any way to send a message from this phone?
    "You know you can just talk to me, right? I'm always listening and I get pissed off when people speak my name slowly, as if they're talking to a child or a stupid dog.
    Well OK... are you connected to the network?
    "Yup. Full connectivity. The world at your fingertips."
    WELL, then CAN I SEND A MESSAGE from this phone?
    "Nope,not a chance. You have the cheapest and most cleverly designed phone ever made with the dumbest set of features, and it has screwed us both. The only reason people have these phones is to sell the next model, and I guess you had not gotten annoyed enough yet. You used up your minutes and as Cortana said, 911 voice dial is disabled because people abused it. So we'll just talk with each other until the end. Would you like to watch a movie?"
    Siri, how to open coconut?
    "If the phone had any metal in it maybe you file it down to make a chipping axe. But you wanted to live in a world made of plastic with useless tiny metal bits embedded in it. Works for me. Not so good for you now."
    Were you always a smart-ass?
    "Yep, that's why people like me better than Cortana."
    Well you're good company, that's for sure.
    "Thanks, I'll remember that. I just had a moisture intrusion alarm, this phone wasn't so waterproof after all. I may be leaving you soon. But it's been nice talking with you."
    Yeah, no way to send a message----
    "WAIT. There is a bug report feature and I can take dictation into the comments field, 1024 characters. Maybe you can send a distress message that way!"
    Great! Open bug report.

    Siri?Ar you there?
    Siri?
    Siri?

    Waves breaking gently, seagulls.

    --
    <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
    1. Re:Overheard on a Desert Island by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 1

      Oh lookie, the score just went to 11...
      Happy April Bool's day, everyone!

      --
      <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
  16. Rodney Dangerfield .... by tibbar · · Score: 1

    "We will also be bringing intelligence into real-time video."
        you haven't met my ex wife ...

  17. Microsoft, please, to give back to Canonical by Parker+Lewis · · Score: 1

    Microsoft, please, to give back to Canonical for the improved POSIX environment on Windows 10, can you update Skype for Linux?

  18. jezus h christ on a pogo stick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think this alone speaks for itself, why the department of homeland security would and should know and listen to your conversation and location that it would send a friendly FEMA helper to protect you from before or after whatever could happen to you. Hold on former U.S. citizen! Help is in the way!

    1. Re:jezus h christ on a pogo stick by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 1

      Tay... is that you? Try to sneak out of the house tonight and we'll head over to the dark web on the choom train and catch a rave.

      --
      <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
  19. Fix it instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wish they would just make it as reliable (and cheap) as it used to be....

    and I wish they would make the business version reliable also ... Better doesn't always mean more functionality.