The Microsoft voice assistant Cortana has had its day. Windows has already officially confirmed this. However, the end should actually come at the end of the year.
Microsoft launched its Cortana voice assistant in 2014. It was supposed to be Microsoft’s answer to the competing systems around Siri, Alexa and Co.
But after less than ten years, the artificial intelligence has now had its day. As the blog Windows Latest reports, the Windows company has already discontinued its voice assistant.
Microsoft parts with Cortana
For a long time, Microsoft has once again made an update available for its voice assistant in the Microsoft Store. But this one does not fix any bugs or offer improvements.
Quite the opposite. The update causes the app to no longer work with Windows 11. After installing the update, the app displays the message: “Cortana is obsolete as a standalone app for Windows.”
End for voice assistant was only planned for the end of the year
In a support article, Microsoft writes that “some changes to Windows” are planned. These would affect users of the Cortana app.
In the current version of the article, these changes are scheduled for August. However, an original version said Cortana would “no longer be supported as a standalone app in Windows after the end of 2023”.
Cortana: Microsoft offers these alternatives
In its support article, Microsoft points out that users will “continue to have access to powerful productivity features in Windows and Edge”.
Instead, other “AI-supported productivity features” are available in Windows. Microsoft lists here, for example, the AI-supported Bing search and the Copilot tool.
How you can continue to use Cortana with Microsoft
While Microsoft has discontinued support for the standalone Cortana app in Windows 11, the application has not disappeared completely. If you are using a computer with Windows 10, you can continue to access the voice assistant for the time being.
However, this should not be possible for much longer. Because, as Windows Latest writes, Microsoft will also switch off Cortana here “within a few weeks”.
Cortana will, however, continue to be available in Outlook Mobile, Teams Mobile, Microsoft Teams View and Microsoft Teams Rooms, according to the Microsoft support article.
