Microsoft And Amazon Combine Forces To Rule Smart Assistant Industry

Right now, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana are two of the most well-known and most-used smart assistants in the market for very different reasons. Alexa helps shoppers buy products on the online retail giant while Cortana provides office-workers or those in tech-centric jobs with assistance. By playing nice with each other, both companies cover two aspects that could let them rule the industry.

What this development means for users is that the two artificial intelligence entities will basically come in contact with each other and work together, Business Insider reports. This arrangement will then allow users to call up Cortana on the Amazon Echo, for example, and Alexa on a PC with Cortana installed.

The gist of the matter is that users can just say “Alexa, open Cortana” or “Cortana, open Alexa” in order to make use of one or the other’s specialty at any given moment. This would be a huge advantage for consumers in theory because it would mean that if they wanted access to both these smart assistants, they wouldn’t need to get their respective devices.

After all, if a user only has a MacBook and an iPhone, using Cortana would not be possible. If that user also has the Echo, things would be different.

As The New York Times points out, however, there are some problems that will need to be addressed first and which consumers need to keep in mind. One is the fact that both assistants can’t be used at the same time. Either Cortana is activated or Alexa, not both. This means that if users are currently asking Cortana for advice but also want to shop on Amazon, they would have to switch back to Alexa.

This setup is only natural since removing the restriction would mean that both companies would have access to their customers’ respective shopping or usage patterns. Neither Amazon nor Microsoft is willing to test these waters, as of now.