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Amazon's Alexa and Microsoft's Cortana Are Going To Work Together (recode.net)
Amazon and Microsoft announced on Wednesday that they've been working on a partnership to allow their respective voice assistants, Alexa and Cortana, to speak to one another. From a report: Starting later this year, owners of Amazon Echos and other Alexa-powered devices will be able to say: "Alexa, open Cortana" to start querying Microsoft's voice assistant. Owners of devices running Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system will be able to summon Alexa via Cortana in a similar manner. Why would customers want that -- especially with the relatively clunky nature of the necessary voice command? The companies say that each voice assistant has its strengths -- features like Microsoft Outlook and Exchange email integration for Cortana and smart-home controls or shopping for Alexa -- and that customers of both companies would benefit from an integration. It's not clear if the two assistants will share voice data in an effort to make each digital assistant smarter. But there is the hope that someday these artificial agents are intelligent enough to route requests to the best virtual assistant for the task without a specific "Alexa" or "Cortana" command.
Have gnu, will travel.
Dave: "Open the pod bay door."
Alexa: "I can't do that, Dave."
Cortana: "I can't do that, Dave."
HAL: "Who invited these bitches to the party?"
You could work together and create an open, non-patent encumbered standard for voice assistants, and open-source your jointly developed assistant. Perhaps spin off a well funded open source organization which could continue work on the software.
......or, you could just keep doing your own proprietary stuff, with half-assed integration, that limits competition and benefits nobody but you.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Very difficult to anthropomorphize google's assistant. Sounds silly but I feel like this gives the other big three a significant advantage.
Seriously, "Alexa, open Cortana"??
Why do we let the nerds specify this stuff? The correct phrase is "Alexa, let me talk to Cortana". When you're on the phone to your Mom, do you say "Mom, open Dad"???
I want more voices and "personalities" on every device I own.
I want to have to remember the different names that go along with different capabilities.
Definitely don't want to be able to change the names myself.
I also would very much like to only use them one at a time, and have to remember the specific phrase to summon each one.
Bonus points if I get to hear them remind each other to remind me to do things.
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