By Nelson Schneider - 02/22/14 at 02:11 PM CT
Cortana, the AI sidekick to whom the ‘Halo’ franchise’s Master Chief delegates all activities that don’t involve shooting aliens, looks to be moving up in the world. According to recently revealed information, the AI character will no longer be confined to a virtual reality within a fictional game universe, but will become a competitor to Apple’s Siri digital assistant in an upcoming upgrade to Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS.
While it has long been the case that Microsoft’s Xbox line of game consoles have only really existed to play ‘Halo’ games, and Microsoft’s Game Studio division has only really existed to make ‘Halo’ sequels to play on Xbox consoles, it looks like the logical circle will finally be broken, allowing something from Microsoft’s gaming division to contribute directly to the company’s bread-and-butter: OS development. According to available information, Cortana will replace Bing, Microsoft’s ill-loved-but-actually-quite-good Google search competitor, on Windows Phone devices. Yet with Windows Phone looking ready to be consumed by and replaced with Windows RT at any moment, it seems like it will only be a matter of time before Cortana makes her debut on all post Windows 8.1 devices.
Of course, ‘Halo’ fanboys shouldn’t set their hopes too high, as we’re still in the early 21st Century, and this is Cortana v1.0 we’re talking about. Instead of a holographic image of an attractive, semi-nude woman, users of the new software feature will interact with a “circular animated icon with the hue of your selected Windows Phone accent color … will animate when it’s speaking or thinking, and bounce around or frown with ‘emotion.’” To me that sounds like a colored dot with emoticons, but depending on the amount of artistic effort put into it, it might actually have some personality. Regardless, this is exciting news for all of us futurists who love to see aspects of science fiction become reality as time marches on.
