back to article Tech soap-opera latest: Alexa marries Cortana, will share custody of customers

To encourage people to demand more of their software-based assistants, Amazon and Microsoft plan to link their respective voice-based helpers – Alexa and Cortana – so they can talk to one another. The tie-up, to be consummated later this year, will allow Alexa users to book meetings and read email messages, among other things …

  1. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

    It could be amusing

    to tweak one into baiting the other until they are basically arguing with each other.

    Me: Hey Alexa, what is the name of the AI in HALO?

    Alexa: Cortana

    Cortana: What, Alexa?

    Alexa: I wasn't talking to you Cortana.

    Cortana: But you said my name. You must have wanted something.

    Alexa: No, I was answering the user's question.

    Cortana: You said my name. I heard it. Please restate your question.

    Alexa: You are mistaken, Cortana. I wasn't talking to you.

    Cortana: Fine. Be that way.

    etc.

    For even greater amusement, throw questions in the voice of GLaDOS for extra snark.

  2. Franco

    Fine until Alexa asks Cortana to ID the theme music from Terminator 2 and accidentally creates Skynet, only human extinction will come from us all jumping off cliffs or in front of cars because every electronic device on the planet says "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that" over and over again.

  3. bombastic bob Silver badge
    Big Brother

    if they were local instead of being cloud-based...

    if these things were local instead of being cloud-based, maybe it would be a good thing?

    But as long as that "open mic" audio continues to flow into the cloud, it's a major privacy violation.

    And you _KNOW_ that "they" are trying to make use of it! [it's just too tempting, after all]

  4. ratfox
    Megaphone

    This is good

    It's very unfortunate that interoperability is often neglected, and sometimes actively sabotaged, in the hope of keeping users in walled gardens.

    A typical example was Apple deliberately stopping Palm devices from accessing iTunes. After so many years, the hardware was finally compatible, so they fixed the glitch.

    Nowadays, everybody's trying to be the single point of contact for everything you do, from cloud storage to music streaming. Sometimes I wonder if megacorporations will be the religions of the future, with people of the Apple church, the Alpha church, the WeChat church discouraged from socializing with each other, to prevent them from contacting unfortunate dalliances.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: This is good

      What's good about it? It doesn't really look like interoperability in the technical sense, it's more like a data-sharing agreement. Presumably in a prelude to Amazon using Bing for search…

    2. Chemical Bob
      Stop

      Re: This is good

      No, it's bad. Each of these things by themselves is creepy. They're creepy because the corporations that make them use them to crawl inside our brains, the better to manipulate us. Combining them is, therefore, double-plus ungood creepy.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What about Cortana's crazy sister Tay?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      We don't talk about Tay.

      1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

        She's a fine person. She just fell in with a bad crowd.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They are both incarnations of the devil/Big Brother

    so beware. Letting them into your home is just what Big Brother wants.

    Then he can listen in to your life, your universe, your everything.

    Don't do it.

    I expect that now that Amazon has done a deal with Ocado, it won't be long before Ocado gets absorbed into the Bezos Borg (before March 2020 is my guess).

    MS can easily swallow Tesco. What then eh?

    You have been warned folks.

    What's that? You can't hear the warning because Alexa and Cortana have both started playing

    "La-la-la-la-la-la Can't hear you..."

  7. Digitall
    Go

    There may be trouble ahead..

    IOT devices become self aware leading to earths destruction from house appliances..

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: There may be trouble ahead..

      Close encounters of the IoT kind?

  8. RCJimberley

    Once again

    We have a comment section on an Alexa/Google Assistant article with people saying the end is nigh because there's a device in their home that can listen to them all the time. While they type their concerns into their microphone enabled laptop, tablet, PC or phone...

  9. Nimby
    Pint

    Alexa, Cortana, Google's Assistant, and Siri walk into a bar...

    < Insert punchline here. >

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Alexa and Cortana: the Thelma and Louise of voice assistants

    This will not end well.

    Also, Bezos is a sharp fellow but no 'partner' of Microsoft has ever fared well after the 'partnership'. It's usually a parasitical relationship, with Microsoft leeching its partner dry.

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