Why Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant beat Cortana and any others? 🤔

Microsoft’s former AI expert, Qi Lu, has provided some rare insight into Microsoft’s struggles to compete with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant.

“I worked on Cortana four and a half years ago. At the time we all were like, Amazon, yeah, that technology is so far behind”.

“Google and Microsoft, technologically, were ahead of Amazon by a wide margin. But look at the AI race today. The Amazon Alexa ecosystem is far ahead of anybody else in the United States.”

Lu believes Microsoft and Google “made the same mistake” of focusing on the phone and PC for voice assistants, instead of a dedicated device.

Microsoft first introduced Cortana ahead of Alexa as a promising digital assistant for its Windows Phone devices, then expanded it to be built into Windows 10 for PCs and into the company’s Xbox One console.

Cortana will also run on various Internet of Things (IoT) devices like fridges, toasters, thermostats, and even cars in Microsoft’s latest bid to catch up and beat Amazon’s popular Alexa voice assistant.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/14/16142642/microsoft-cortana-amazon-alexa-qi-lu