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Microsoft Windows 10 could add voice controls and interactions next year, despite the company’s decision to decouple the Cortana voice assistant from its operating system. Microsoft is testing the new ‘speech launcher’ feature in Windows 10, which includes typing and speech-based search almost anywhere within the computer system.
Voice release
The voice launcher in the beta test expands on the new software keyboard and voice typing that Microsoft introduced earlier this year. In the beta version, voice commands are part of the computer’s search function. Each time a text field appears to search, there is an option to dictate the search terms for files or settings. You can also augment dictation with automatic scoring. It’s worth noting that the feature is being tested not only in various varieties of English, but also in French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese. The feature won’t likely emerge for public use until the second half of 2021, but testing it out so early makes sense, especially with so many languages. For Microsoft, there is also the added benefit of collecting data on how people speak as a way to improve all of its voice AI programs. However, having learned from the privacy craze last summer about how voice data is used, sharing voice clips is something users should actively embrace.
“Your daily use of voice typing could make Microsoft’s online voice technology more accurate for everyone who speaks your language,” Microsoft explains in the role description. “If you decide to contribute your voice clips, some of these clips will be reviewed by Microsoft employees and vendors.”
Cortana left
Microsoft’s renovation of the Cortana voice assistant from a consumer service to an enterprise service, which has spanned years, is almost complete, with the app closing in 2021 and related skills now gone. Microsoft decided to redeploy Cortana to Windows 10, but as a standalone app, not as part of the taskbar. That means Cortana can’t handle requests for music and smart home devices, or other tasks that it used to do. Instead, Cortana is now more about supporting conversational AI in other Microsoft services. It could become a major player in the development of chatbots and custom voice assistants. As this beta test shows, Cortana’s output doesn’t mean there won’t be any voice controls on devices running Windows, it’s just that they’ll be an aspect of the operating system, divorced from any global AI voice assistant.
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