Passive Voice Activation For Cortana Being Developed

Windows Phone users are looking forward to the public release of Windows Phone 8.1 as it finally brings one of the most sought after feature to Microsoft’s mobile platform. Cortana is a digital personal assistant for WP devices that Microsoft showed off a few weeks back. Even though it will be available in select markets at launch the team behind Cortana is working hard to improve its feature set and bring it to more markets. One feature that Cortana is going to receive sometime in the future is passive voice activation.

The word comes directly from the group program manager for Cortana on Windows Phone, Marcus Ash. He made headlines recently when his comments were believed to be an indication that Cortana would be launched for iOS and Android as well. Ash then took to Twitter to clarify that there are no plans of exporting Cortana to rival platforms.

Ash confirmed on Twitter that voice activation is being designed for Cortana. He didn’t go into much detail but did say that ambient background noise is one of the factors that they’re keeping in mind as they design this feature. Unfortunately Ash didn’t say when voice activation will make its way to Cortana.

The feature would free users from having to launch Cortana by either tapping the live tile or holding the search button. Instead they’ll only have to say a command out loud and their device will pick it up and automatically launch Cortana. It will be similar to “OK, Google,” for Google Now.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Cortana, Microsoft, windows phone 8.1