Читать книгу Windows 10 All-in-One For Dummies - Ciprian Adrian Rusen, Woody Leonhard - Страница 62

Although Apple partisans will give you a zillion reasons why Siri rules and Googlies swear the superiority of Google Assistant, Cortana partisans think Microsoft rules the AI roost, of course. Unlike Siri and Google Assistant, though, Cortana used to take over the Windows search function. As of the May 2020 update, that is no longer the case, and Cortana has a box of her own, isolated from the rest of the operating system. You can see her in Figure 2-13. She now behaves more like a chat app and can take both voice and text commands from you.

Cortana works only when connected to the Internet and is severely limited unless you use a Microsoft account. You can control some aspects of Cortana’s inquisitiveness by clicking the hamburger icon in the upper-left corner and going to Settings. For example, you can select how you want to talk to her (through typing, speaking, or both), the permissions you give her, and your privacy settings.

Frequently overlooked in Cortana discussions is the fact that everything you search for through Cortana goes to Microsoft’s giant database in the sky.

FIGURE 2-13: Cortana knows all, sees all if you enable her.

Cortana improves as it gathers more information about you — yes, by logging what you do. But it also improves as Microsoft hones its artificial intelligence know-how, on the back end. One interesting move on Microsoft’s part, and an admittance that they have lost the first round of the virtual assistant battle, is that Cortana is now integrated with Amazon’s Alexa. Amazon and Microsoft partnered up in August 2018 to make Cortana available through Amazon Echo devices and Alexa available through Windows 10. Cortana is going to be able to start Alexa, and take Alexa commands, and vice-versa. In theory, it sounds great, but this partnership is in its early stages of development, without much fuss going around.

In actual use, there’s no question that Google’s AI is superior to all the others, with Siri and Alexa each occupying different niches. Cortana’s well adapted to Windows 10, but she isn’t all that smart. I talk about Cortana in Book 3, Chapter 5.