RIP Cortana: Microsoft says its Home windows AI app will die

Microsoft launched Cortana as an AI assistant and the flagship characteristic of Home windows 10 in 2015. Now, eight years later, Microsoft is pulling the plug.

In a help doc, Microsoft mentioned that it’s ending help for the Cortana app, Cortana’s solely remaining presence inside Home windows. As an alternative, Microsoft mentioned it can encourage customers to make use of different AI-powered options, whether or not or not it’s inside a standalone app or just a part of Home windows or Microsoft Edge.

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Microsoft did say that Cortana will nonetheless be out there inside Outlook Cell and varied variations of Groups, together with Microsoft’s conferencing resolution, Groups Rooms. Microsoft has used Cortana to supply a “each day briefing,” summarizing your Outlook emails in a glanceable synopsis. That performance is now branded as Microsoft Viva, nonetheless.

“We all know that this variation could have an effect on among the methods you’re employed in Home windows, so we need to aid you transition easily to the brand new choices,” Microsoft mentioned.

What killed Cortana? AI. Microsoft didn’t explicitly say so, however it seems that the corporate believes that different AI-infused providers, comparable to Home windows Copilot and the Bing Chat providers inside Microsoft Edge Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot can fill the invoice.

The writing on the wall outlining Cortana’s demise was etched years in the past, when Microsoft started phasing out Cortana’s presence: eradicating it from the Home windows shell and separating it into an app, then gutting it to the purpose (initially) the place it couldn’t do primary math. In 2020, Andrew Shuman, Microsoft’s company vice chairman answerable for Cortana, instructed PCWorld that Cortana’s improvement was pinched between the pandemic and the dearth of accessible on-site sources. It was then that Microsoft made the pivot from utilizing Cortana as a private AI app to creating it merely consultant of Microsoft’s productiveness push.

In 2015, Cortana was one thing new and unimaginable, the flagship characteristic of Home windows 10. Now, she’ll simply be one other Microsoft client initiative that fell by the wayside. RIP.