The article talks about what Cortana is, why it is used and some features of this virtual assistant are considered.
Digital age
Every year, digital technologies are developing more and more, and what a few years ago seemed like science fiction or existed in the form of concepts, comes to life. True, it’s not always successful, a vivid example of this is Google Glass, “smart glasses” with elements of virtual reality.
Various virtual assistants with the likeness of artificial intelligence have become especially popular in recent years, for example, Siri - available to users of Apple products. And for a long time, the apple company did not have competitors in this area. Of course, for third-party phones and other operating systems, third-party developers released various virtual assistants, however, they required a long setup and did not differ much in quality.
But with the release of Windows 10, everything changed, and now Apple has a significant competitor in this area, and many users have already managed to try such a virtual assistant as Cortana. So what is Cortana, what are its capabilities and how to enable it? We’ll talk about this.
Game past
Cortana is a virtual voice assistant with certain elements of AI (artificial intelligence), developed by Microsoft. In the future, it is also planned to be released on devices running iOS. For the first time it was shown to the general public during one of the conferences held on April 2, 2014.
And by the way, she received this name in honor of one of the heroines of the Halo series of computer games, and she was voiced by the same actress who did this in the game. So now we know what Cortana is.
Opportunities
Cortana was developed as a universal virtual assistant that can greatly facilitate the search for information on the Internet and the general management of a computer or other digital device. One of its key features is that it can anticipate user requests and needs.
If necessary, she can be given full access to a number of personal data - address book, email, search query history and more. Cortana will use all such information to facilitate interaction with the user and increase his "independence". So we sorted out the question of what Cortana is.
In the future, it will be called by the familiar “Start” button, all search queries and other things can be entered either manually or set by voice commands. Moreover, the interaction is assumed both at the level of a regular Internet surfing, and based on personal files. For example, she can be instructed to find a particular folder, delete a directory, launch another program, system settings, and much more.
The developers tried to bring Cortana as close as possible to the level of human perception: she can joke, maintain conversations for now at a simple level, and much more. Also, in addition to searching and controlling a computer, its functions include tracking current information, for example, it can remind you of an upcoming meeting, the birthday of someone close to you, advise you to change clothes if the weather forecast is unfavorable, etc. Now we know what Cortana is in Windows 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"
Limitations
True, not everyone can take advantage of this wonderful system; it does not work with users under 13 years of age. This is determined by the date of birth, which is indicated in the Microsoft account profile. But the limitations, unfortunately, do not end there.
You can often come across the question of how to turn on Cortana. And here it is not so simple. The fact is that so far only a few languages are supported by the system, and Russian, unfortunately, is not among them. But not everything is so sad, you can still launch it.
To do this, in the computer settings you need to change the region to the one that Cortana supports, for example, the United States. After that, you need to download a special language pack for the selected region in “Language and Region”, and then select the supported language in the “Voice Recognition” section, in our case it is English. Now we know how to turn on Cortana. After all the settings, 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.
Spying
One of the negative aspects that overshadowed the joy of users from having such an assistant is that Cortana refuses to work when the telemetry and personal data of the user are turned off, such as Internet browsing history, voice requests and more.
But if you still started it, how to use Cortana? Everything is very simple. After its first launch, she herself will start the configuration, offer to indicate her authority and will familiarize herself with a short list of commands.