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

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

In a help doc, Microsoft stated that it’s ending help for the Cortana app, Cortana’s solely remaining presence inside Home windows. As a substitute, Microsoft stated it would 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.

Microsoft did say that Cortana will nonetheless be accessible 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, nevertheless.

“We all know that this modification could have an effect on a few of the methods you’re employed in Home windows, so we need to enable you transition easily to the brand new choices,” Microsoft stated.

What killed Cortana? AI. Microsoft didn’t explicitly say so, however it seems that the corporate believes that different AI-infused companies, corresponding to Home windows Copilot and the Bing Chat companies 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 assets. 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 unbelievable, the flagship function of Home windows 10. Now, she’ll simply be one other Microsoft shopper initiative that fell by the wayside. RIP.