One of the upcoming features of Windows Phone 8.1 is allegedly a voice assistant named Cortana after the AI in the Halo game franchise. Microsoft has yet to confirm this feature but based on leaked photos and videos, it seems to be pretty real, and with hours away from Microsoft’s BUILD conference, it seems that Cortana is already featured on the Bing personalization page.
The page has since been taken down but not before a screenshot was captured (see picture above) which more or less confirms the feature. Not much is known about Cortana for now or what the full extent of its capabilities are, but it is said to be very tightly integrated with Bing. This is hardly surprising since we doubt Microsoft would want Cortana pulling up Google search results, right?
According to the page, it seems that Cortana will sync with the information on your Windows Phone device and based on that, it will be able to pull data or provide recommendations that are more suited towards you, or at least based on what the software thinks. It sounds a bit like how Google Chrome works where it is able to provide users with recommendations based on their browsing history.
In any case the Microsoft BUILD conference is only a few hours away and we expect Microsoft to provide additional details about the upcoming Windows Phone 8.1 update along with some of its features, like Cortana, which we’re sure many are excited to see if it will work just as good as the competition, if not better.
Filed in . Read more about Microsoft and Windows Phone 8.1.