She is
She can remind you to buy milk the next time you are at the store. She will offer you to take an umbrella with you if it is raining outside. If necessary, she will reject the call herself and send an SMS in reply about the temporary unavailability of the subscriber if you are sitting at an important meeting.
It will help you plan your day based on your requests and many other factors (traffic jams, weather, etc.). It is not yet available for Russia, but now you can get acquainted with its capabilities (in the post we will tell you how). She is Cortana. And we want to dedicate this post to her.
It took two years of research and development to make a smart assistant, modeled on real personal assistants, on Windows Phone (version 8.1, which will be available soon on Nokia Lumia smartphones with the Nokia Cyan update). And it was really a big job of a large development team, which, in addition to software engineers, included scientists, linguistics specialists, and many other technical experts.
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The intellectual assistant was not developed from scratch - the company has used its extensive work over the past five years. So, Cortana works on Bing servers, in close cooperation with the team of which the voice assistant was developed.
“We had an idea that might seem strange at first glance — to embed a personal assistant into the phone,” says Marcus Ash, one of the leaders of the group that developed Cortana. “Therefore, in the process of creation, we communicated a lot with real people, personal assistants of many managers.”
Marcus ash
It was the model of behavior of people working as a personal assistant that became the basis of the concept at the very beginning of the development of Cortana. And, as it turned out, the work of such people is far from sugar. In order for their managers to always efficiently cope with their tasks, assistants must control huge amounts of various information, starting from the deadlines for submitting projects, meetings and meetings, and ending with family holidays, travel plans and a lot of other trifles. At the same time, they need not only to be aware of everything, but also to foresee what their leader may need in the next moment.
“It was important for us to do something a little more than just a voice control system for a telephone,” says Marcus. - We wanted to create a proactive virtual assistant, who would suggest that I want to do the next moment. This was to be his main difference. ”
At the same time, unlike competitive services, which know too much about users and give a lot of unnecessary information, or do not know anything, the developers managed to find the optimal solution. They allowed users to choose for themselves what Cortana should know, and what better to leave out of sight.
Interface cortana
Just as each personal assistant has its own notepad, the developers endowed Cortana with a Notebook cloud service, where she could store those data about users that she knows.
“If I may say so, Cortana has your collective image that you can change at any time, for example, saying,“ No, in fact, I don’t want you to read my email, ”explains Ash. “In this way, you can fully control how much Cortana knows about you.” Everything is absolutely transparent. ”
When you first launch Cortana, users will have to answer some questions, such as name, eating habits, favorite film genre, and so on. After that, the assistant starts his immediate work, providing the most relevant information that may be needed at the moment, such as traffic jams on the way to work, flight reminders or, for example, the results of the match between your favorite teams.
The list of all the features of Microsoft Intelligent Assistant cannot be listed in one post. But it is enough to list some situations in order to get a general idea of ​​the level of her intellect.
For example, if in a message (no matter in an email or SMS) there is a phrase like “let's meet at 8 pm”, then Cortana will prompt the user to create an event in the calendar or a notification. She also quickly guides the user in traveling, having previously downloaded the latest information about the currency and weather.
Cortana is very attentive to the context of requests. For example, when asked “find me the best restaurant nearby” and “which restaurants are the best here”, it will show two different shows with one of the best restaurants and a list of restaurants, respectively. And what is most impressive, she can understand the context of related queries. That is, if you continue to say the phrase “call there” or “how to get there”, Cortana will understand that you mean the very restaurant that she just found.
In addition, like the now popular IFTTT service, this intelligent assistant can work with "triggers", only in its interpretation. An example is to ask Cortana “remind me to ask <...> when I call <...>” and she will do it with an incoming or outgoing call to the right person.
With all its minimalist look (Cortana appears to the user as a simple animated circle), the developers tried to make it as "humane" as possible. This, for example, is indicated by the fact that the voice of the intellectual assistant is the actress Jen Taylor, who voiced Cortana in the game Halo.
Note : the name Cortana is well known to many gamers since it came from the game universe of Halo. That was the name of the virtual assistant of the main character of the Master Chifa series. To call the voice assistant in Windows Phone by this name was suggested at one of the meetings by the program manager of Windows Phone Robert Howard. “For a long time, it was just a rough version of the name,” comments Markus Ash. - "And there was a chance that we will not use it in the final version." However, in the end, including thanks to the petitions of users, it was decided to dwell on this option, which is well combined with the initial concept: to create the most realistic and humane digital assistant.
About the "humanity" Cortana says the fact that she knows how to answer simple questions and even joke. For example, to the question “Do you ever sleep?” She will answer with a joke, “I never sleep! Sleep is for laptops. ” If you ask her "Who is your father?", You can get the answer "From a technical point of view, it would be Bill Gates."
Marcus says: “We did not want to create a strict and soulless interface. After all, nothing is more disposable than a bright personality. ”
Cortana is capable of giving witty or touching answers to many requests and even expressing emotions. But, of course, she has her own limit. However, according to the developers, these limits will constantly expand. For example, already now Cortana, like Shazam, has learned to identify music by ear, as well as to predict the results of football matches , based on the statistics of their performances.
“One of the big challenges for Cortana is to further develop powerful machine learning algorithms,” says Marcus. “For now, she has to work with a relatively small amount of user data, but the more requests Cortana will receive in the future, the smarter it will become.”
At the moment, Cortana is in beta testing and is available for developers, as well as for owners of Nokia Lumia 630 and Lumia 930 smartphones on Windows Phone 8.1 in the USA. In the coming months, it will also be available for China and the UK, and then in other countries.
In order to try Cortana on devices intended for the Russian market, you should perform the following steps:
• Go to “Settings” → “Language + Region”.
• Change region to US.
• Change the interface language to American English (US English).
• Reboot smartphone.
“We are constantly making changes to the project, but we can talk about some significant changes in the project only when Cortana appears on more devices and markets,” says Markus. “We want to make changes to the project, taking into account the feedback received from users.”
“In the future, Cortana will be one of the elements of a common ecosystem that will revolve around the user,” he added. - Wearable electronics, personal computers and even cars know a lot about you and your habits. And they should help you optimize your life, better manage your personal time and be always in touch with people who are dear to you. Human-oriented technologies are what we are particularly focused on right now, and Cortana is an important part of them. ”
It will help you plan your day based on your requests and many other factors (traffic jams, weather, etc.). It is not yet available for Russia, but now you can get acquainted with its capabilities (in the post we will tell you how). She is Cortana. And we want to dedicate this post to her.
It took two years of research and development to make a smart assistant, modeled on real personal assistants, on Windows Phone (version 8.1, which will be available soon on Nokia Lumia smartphones with the Nokia Cyan update). And it was really a big job of a large development team, which, in addition to software engineers, included scientists, linguistics specialists, and many other technical experts.
')
The intellectual assistant was not developed from scratch - the company has used its extensive work over the past five years. So, Cortana works on Bing servers, in close cooperation with the team of which the voice assistant was developed.
“We had an idea that might seem strange at first glance — to embed a personal assistant into the phone,” says Marcus Ash, one of the leaders of the group that developed Cortana. “Therefore, in the process of creation, we communicated a lot with real people, personal assistants of many managers.”
Marcus ash
It was the model of behavior of people working as a personal assistant that became the basis of the concept at the very beginning of the development of Cortana. And, as it turned out, the work of such people is far from sugar. In order for their managers to always efficiently cope with their tasks, assistants must control huge amounts of various information, starting from the deadlines for submitting projects, meetings and meetings, and ending with family holidays, travel plans and a lot of other trifles. At the same time, they need not only to be aware of everything, but also to foresee what their leader may need in the next moment.
“It was important for us to do something a little more than just a voice control system for a telephone,” says Marcus. - We wanted to create a proactive virtual assistant, who would suggest that I want to do the next moment. This was to be his main difference. ”
At the same time, unlike competitive services, which know too much about users and give a lot of unnecessary information, or do not know anything, the developers managed to find the optimal solution. They allowed users to choose for themselves what Cortana should know, and what better to leave out of sight.
Interface cortana
Just as each personal assistant has its own notepad, the developers endowed Cortana with a Notebook cloud service, where she could store those data about users that she knows.
“If I may say so, Cortana has your collective image that you can change at any time, for example, saying,“ No, in fact, I don’t want you to read my email, ”explains Ash. “In this way, you can fully control how much Cortana knows about you.” Everything is absolutely transparent. ”
When you first launch Cortana, users will have to answer some questions, such as name, eating habits, favorite film genre, and so on. After that, the assistant starts his immediate work, providing the most relevant information that may be needed at the moment, such as traffic jams on the way to work, flight reminders or, for example, the results of the match between your favorite teams.
The list of all the features of Microsoft Intelligent Assistant cannot be listed in one post. But it is enough to list some situations in order to get a general idea of ​​the level of her intellect.
For example, if in a message (no matter in an email or SMS) there is a phrase like “let's meet at 8 pm”, then Cortana will prompt the user to create an event in the calendar or a notification. She also quickly guides the user in traveling, having previously downloaded the latest information about the currency and weather.
Cortana is very attentive to the context of requests. For example, when asked “find me the best restaurant nearby” and “which restaurants are the best here”, it will show two different shows with one of the best restaurants and a list of restaurants, respectively. And what is most impressive, she can understand the context of related queries. That is, if you continue to say the phrase “call there” or “how to get there”, Cortana will understand that you mean the very restaurant that she just found.
In addition, like the now popular IFTTT service, this intelligent assistant can work with "triggers", only in its interpretation. An example is to ask Cortana “remind me to ask <...> when I call <...>” and she will do it with an incoming or outgoing call to the right person.
With all its minimalist look (Cortana appears to the user as a simple animated circle), the developers tried to make it as "humane" as possible. This, for example, is indicated by the fact that the voice of the intellectual assistant is the actress Jen Taylor, who voiced Cortana in the game Halo.
Note : the name Cortana is well known to many gamers since it came from the game universe of Halo. That was the name of the virtual assistant of the main character of the Master Chifa series. To call the voice assistant in Windows Phone by this name was suggested at one of the meetings by the program manager of Windows Phone Robert Howard. “For a long time, it was just a rough version of the name,” comments Markus Ash. - "And there was a chance that we will not use it in the final version." However, in the end, including thanks to the petitions of users, it was decided to dwell on this option, which is well combined with the initial concept: to create the most realistic and humane digital assistant.
About the "humanity" Cortana says the fact that she knows how to answer simple questions and even joke. For example, to the question “Do you ever sleep?” She will answer with a joke, “I never sleep! Sleep is for laptops. ” If you ask her "Who is your father?", You can get the answer "From a technical point of view, it would be Bill Gates."
Marcus says: “We did not want to create a strict and soulless interface. After all, nothing is more disposable than a bright personality. ”
Cortana is capable of giving witty or touching answers to many requests and even expressing emotions. But, of course, she has her own limit. However, according to the developers, these limits will constantly expand. For example, already now Cortana, like Shazam, has learned to identify music by ear, as well as to predict the results of football matches , based on the statistics of their performances.
“One of the big challenges for Cortana is to further develop powerful machine learning algorithms,” says Marcus. “For now, she has to work with a relatively small amount of user data, but the more requests Cortana will receive in the future, the smarter it will become.”
At the moment, Cortana is in beta testing and is available for developers, as well as for owners of Nokia Lumia 630 and Lumia 930 smartphones on Windows Phone 8.1 in the USA. In the coming months, it will also be available for China and the UK, and then in other countries.
In order to try Cortana on devices intended for the Russian market, you should perform the following steps:
• Go to “Settings” → “Language + Region”.
• Change region to US.
• Change the interface language to American English (US English).
• Reboot smartphone.
“We are constantly making changes to the project, but we can talk about some significant changes in the project only when Cortana appears on more devices and markets,” says Markus. “We want to make changes to the project, taking into account the feedback received from users.”
“In the future, Cortana will be one of the elements of a common ecosystem that will revolve around the user,” he added. - Wearable electronics, personal computers and even cars know a lot about you and your habits. And they should help you optimize your life, better manage your personal time and be always in touch with people who are dear to you. Human-oriented technologies are what we are particularly focused on right now, and Cortana is an important part of them. ”
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/228813/
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