Microsoft’s digital personal assistant Cortana is now customised to work in India, Japan, Canada and Australia as an update has been launched to its Windows 10 OS for PCs and mobile devices. In order to cater to the local audience, Cortana has been customised to work with the Indian voice, accent and speech patterns but it is available only in the English language.
To appeal to the Indian audience, Cortana has been developed with a cultural approach. It recognises Indian festivals and customs, reminds the user of upcoming events and meetings. Bearing the technical aspect in mind, Cortana has been designed to work with apps such as BookMyShow and Gmail in India.
Microsoft’s new browser Microsoft Edge, which replaces Internet Explorer, will provide a platform for the functioning of Cortana across computers and mobile phones.
Cortana Australia features: According to Microsoft, the digital assistant, which has been named after an Artificial Intelligence character in its Halo game series, will get more personalised as one uses it more, since it will learn the user’s natural language patterns, interests and digital schedule. Cortana can respond to a text message, look up the flight time, sing a song, aggregate Bing search results, calendar entries, contact and email details to provide results.
Phone Companion bundle: In May, the company had also announced the availability of an app bundle called Phone Companion for the PC, which would let Windows 10 users install Cortana on Android and iOS devices. On launching the Companion, users would be able to set up their Windows, Android or iPhone. The bundle will include support for OneDrive, Office 365, Skype, OneNote and the Music app with Outlook. Changes made to Cortana’s Notebook will be visible across all devices. OneDrive will be able to store all photos taken on the mobile phone automatically, be visible in the Windows 10 PC Photos app. For Music, users can sync music from OneDrive, the PC, Android or iOS phones.
Cortana for Windows Phones and Microsoft Band: In July last year, the company announced that the beta version of Cortana for Windows Phone would be available to users in China and UK with the update, while users in India, Canada and Australia would have to be content with an alpha version. Since the Indian users would get the “alpha” update, they had to opt-in and select either the US or the UK version of Cortana, meaning that at that time, Indian users wouldn’t get any localised features. Note that in October 2015, at its Microsoft Devices event, Microsoft also launched a new wearable called the Microsoft Band, the activity tracker, with Cortana integration.
This update to Windows 10 will boast an accelerated performance in everyday tasks in the above regions and also make the operating system more inclined towards the user friendly aspect of technology.