Hi, everyone. I was on LinkedIn and just found out that Microsoft and Amazon are bringing Alexa and Cortana to all Echo speakers and Windows 10 users. The public preview bringing the most popular AI assistant on PCs together with the smart speaker with the largest U.S. market. Each of the assistants brings unique features to the table. Cortana, for example, can schedule a meeting with Outlook, create location-based reminders, or draw on LinkedIn to tell you about people in your next meeting. And Alexa has more than 40,000 voice apps or skills make to tackle a broad range of use cases.
Many of the features common to both assistants like reminders, timers, or adding events to your calendar will be available through both Alexa and Cortana. The multi-assistant approach for Echo speakers and Windows 10 PCs makes Amazon and Microsoft different from rivals with a single virtual assistant, such as Siri in Apple’s HomePod, Bixby in the recently debuted Galaxy Home speaker, and Google Assistant in Google’s line of Home smart speakers. Microsoft and Amazon gave the world it’s first look at how Alexa on PCs and Cortana on Echo speakers will work in May at the Build developer conference in Seattle. Smart speakers with Cortana support include Echo, Echo Dot, Spot, Echo Plus, and Echo Show, a company spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email. Alexa will also be available on the Harmon Kardon Invoke smart speaker.