Cortana and Amazon Alexa integration coming "soon"

In August 2017 Microsoft and Amazon announced that the Amazon Alexa voice assistant will soon offer a Cortana skill, allowing Echo owners to access information which is only available via Microsoft’s own voice assistant service.

Users will be able to say “Alexa, Open Cortana” followed by their command such as “When is the next budget review” which is only available to Microsoft’s AI.

The service will also work vice versa, allowing Cortana users to access Alexa skills.

The integration was supposed to arrive in 2017, but it appears that the two companies missed the deadline.

Thurrott.com chased them up and asked for a comment regarding the delay.

While neither company committed to a specific date both remained enthusiastic.

A Microsoft spokesperson said “We’ll have more to share soon” and Amazon’s statement note, “We’re working on it and expect to begin rolling it out soon”.

Earlier Satya Nadella said “The personality and expertise of each (personal assistant) will be such that if they interoperated, the user will get more out of it. That resonated for me and for him, and then that’s what led to the teams working.”

While tens of millions of Amazon Echos have been sold, the installed base of Cortana on Windows 10 is theoretically in the hundreds of millions, meaning if the 25,000 Alexa skills can be accessed from your PC Windows 10 users are in for an amazing windfall in terms of home automation and other skills.

“In my view of the world, because that would be best for the customer, that’s probably what eventually happens,” noted Bezos last year.