Microsoft announces updated Cortana experience by removing music, connected home and third-party skills

Microsoft today revealed the future of Cortana digital assistant. Microsoft is now positioning Cortana as your personal productivity assistant. So, Microsoft is removing music, connected home and third-party skills of Cortana. The updated Cortana experience in Windows 10 will be available as a free update to the latest version of Windows 10 this spring. For now, the new Cortana experience will be fully available only for English (United States) users. Cortana will support queries like the below.

• “What’s next on my calendar?”
• “Remind me to send the ‘weekly report’ every Friday at 2pm.”
• “Add ‘status report’ to my task list.”

Cortana will continue to deliver answers from Bing, set alarms and timers, open apps, adjust settings, or give you a joke. Outside the US, the updated Cortana experience will only include answers from Bing and the ability to chat with Cortana. Productivity-based features will be available in the future.

Microsoft also announced the following changes as part of the updated Cortana experience:

• You must be securely logged in with your work or school account or your Microsoft account before using Cortana.
• Microsoft is ending support for Cortana in older versions of Windows that have reached their end-of-service dates.
• Microsoft will turning off the Cortana services in the Microsoft Launcher on Android by the end of April.

Source: Microsoft