The two companies have been working behind closed doors on a Cortana – Alexa integration. More specifically, the two rival virtual assistants can now communicate with each other. Due to be announced today, the development would let users speak to Cortana using Alexa, and vice versa. In its announcement today, Microsoft explained how the integration will work: “Alexa as a guest on Cortana Cortana as a guest on Alexa With Cortana as a guest on Alexa, Alexa users will have access to some of Cortana’s most useful productivity capabilities that help people stay organized and on top of what’s important to them. What if you’re making breakfast in the morning and need to know if you have enough time to drop off the dry-cleaning before work? On your Alexa device, you can say, “Alexa, open Cortana,” and ask when your first meeting is. If you won’t have enough time, simply ask Alexa to open Cortana again and set a reminder for the end of your workday to drop off the clothes.” In an interview last week, Bezos hinted at this collaboration by offering praise to Cortana. “I want them to have access to as many of those AIs as possible,” Bezos said, before giving Microsoft’s assistant as an example.
Collaboration
Bezos made the first moves at Microsoft’s annual CEO Summit in Seattle. Nadella quickly warmed to the idea and development began on how the integration would work. Speaking to The Seattle Times, Nadella says assistants can collaborate in a similar way to web browsers: “The personality and expertise of each one will be such that if they interoperated, the user will get more out of it,” he says. “That resonated for me and for him, and then that’s what led to the teams working.” The next logical step would be to integrate Siri and Google Assistant. Bezos says no contact has been made but he would be open to the idea. “I’d welcome it,” he said. “Hopefully, they’ll be inspired by it,” Nadella said. “At least that would be my hope.”
