Microsoft aims for full conversations with Cortana

Generally we use voice commands for just that – commands or single item queries, but according to Satya Nadella Microsoft is not satisfied with that.

Their aim with their digital assistant is to have full 20 part exchanges with their bots, and Microsoft is already managing that with XiaoIce, their Chinese bot.

Of course one can wonder if this is a cultural thing – while XiaoIce is very popular in China its western version Tay quickly crashed and burned.

Natural conversation is such a difficult problem Amazon is giving away $2.5 million to those who can get Alexa to converses coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes. With Microsoft with their Cortana push going head to head with Amazon the spoils may go to the company who can turn our digital assistant into our digital friend first.