Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella demonstrates Cortana, as he delivers a keynote address during the 2014 Microsoft Build developer conference on April 2, 2014 in San Francisco, California. (Photo : Getty Images/Justin Sullivan)
Microsoft Cortana is not as loved as Apple's Siri or the Google Assistant but the Redmond-based tech giant is looking to change that. The company is now opening the AI program for third-party developers.
Cortana, who is named after an iconic character in the "Halo" video game series, is famous but not really that accessible for non-Windows users. Even then, there are some countries where Cortana is unavailable even if a user is running Windows 10.
Microsoft recently revealed the Cortana Devices SDK that will be open for third-party developers in hopes of boosting the AI assistant to compete with Siri, Amazon's Alexa and the Google Assistant, Venture Beat reported.
One company named Knowmail is already planning to use Cortana to boost their automation engine for emails. No complete roadmap has been laid out yet but the end product is expected to help users automatically sort out their emails to find out urgent ones and just temporarily ignore unimportant ones for the time being. It would save time because users would not have to read them one by one.
Cortana could also help in dictating the important emails. It can save time as the user can just listen while he/she is eating or browsing the web.
Microsoft's Cortana will be used in the new Harman/Kardon speaker to compete with the Amazon Echo and Google Home with a release date set for 2017, Phone Arena reported. There could be more similar products in the near future thanks to the Cortana Devices SDK.
The Cortana Devices SDK will be available in a wide variety of platforms besides Windows. Third-party developers for Android, Linux and others will be able to access the SDK to build Cortana-powered apps and products.
Microsoft's decision to release the Cortana Devices SDK proves that the company really wants to be on top of the AI game. Google already has a good reputation in AI with their Deepmind projects while Apple's Siri is mostly limited to iOS device users who want assistance.
Learn more about the Harman/Kardon speaker powered by Cortana in the video below:
