Skype hangs up on Cortana bot, hands over call to Alexa

18 months ago Microsoft brought Cortana to Skype as a bot.  Cortana could find movie dates for you, organise your day by detecting information in your chats and intelligently scheduling calendar appointments, and could be called on to inject a touch of levity into the conversation in the form of jokes.

Today, in line with Microsoft’s general withdrawal from the smart digital assistant market (and noticed by Florian Beaubois), Microsoft has started notifying Cortana users on Skype that the bot is being withdrawn soon.

Similarly, as on the desktop, Microsoft is handing over the batton to Amazon’s Alexa, and are even rewarding users with 200 Skype minutes for connecting to the Alexa bot,

Microsoft has said they intend to move Cortana from being a smart digital assistant to being more assistive, similar to the difference between Bixby and Google Assitant, with the Cortana, for example, guiding users into setting up their PC rather than telling them what the weather is tomorrow.

Will our readers miss the Cortana bot? Let us know below.

Via onMSFT