Nadella still believes Cortana can win over Alexa in the long term

Many are already writing their eulogies for Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, after Amazon’s Alexa made strong moves onto the PC platform, Cortana’s last stronghold.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is however not concerned, saying at last night’s investors call he welcomed Amazon onto the Windows platform.

“That’s why we’re working with Alexa, and we would welcome it on our devices because we believe in a world where our own assistant should be available everywhere and so should other assistants be available on our devices,” he noted.

Microsoft saw strengths in their own offering, based on Cortana and Microsoft’s “crossover between work and life.” Nadella said Cortana has a lot of information sources to draw from, including Windows 10, Office 365, Xbox and more.

Nadella also thought it was still early in the game, saying currently digital assistants are “fairly dumb” when having conversations and that Microsoft was investing a lot in AI and that Nadella envisions a future version of Cortana that can have back-and-forth conversations with users about a variety of topics.

Nadella ended by noting that he did not envision a future where only one digital assistant dominated, but long-term readers will be familiar with this refrain from the early days of Windows Phone.

While the first company to create Her will surely be the winner, the other companies working towards this goal are no slouches, with Google Deepmind a current leader in AI  research and Amazon having a very good track record of getting their AI products into the market.

With Microsoft’s attitude and performance so far, do our readers think Cortana has a chance? Let us know below.

Via Geekwire.com