Build 2016: Cortana's updated version coming to India soon says Microsoft

India will be among a select group of 13 nations where an updated version of Microsoft’s voice-based virtual assistant will roll out later this summer as part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update announced by the technology giant. Apart from India, the other countries where the updated version of Cortana will be rolled out alongside the Windows 10 Anniversary Update include the US, the UK, China, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil, Cortana’s Group Programme Manager Marcus Ash said during a session on the sidelines of the ongoing annual developers’ conference Build 2016 in San Francisco. Ash told PTI that the update will be available for both phone and personal computers and Microsoft is focused on “getting it right” for its “most important countries”, particularly India, China and Japan. Ash said Cortana is an English product right now in India but given the different regional languages and dialects in the country, Microsoft is starting to think about how to expand it to the other languages. “There are all these different languages and regional dialects. That’s the thing they are starting to think about… how to expand (to other languages),” he said. Cortana was first made available in India in November last year when the technology giant had rolled out its first major update to the Windows 10 operating system. Kicking-off the Build 2016 conference, Nadella had showcased improvements to Cortana, which was introduced two years ago, and announced previews of new cloud services and toolkits designed to create intelligent bots. Microsoft on Thursday announced at the ongoing conference that the anniversary update for Windows 10 will be available later this summer in all the 13 countries and along with features innovations for Windows Ink, Cortana, Windows Hello and gaming. Microsoft had introduced at the conference the ‘Cortana Intelligence Suite’, formerly known as the Cortana Analytics Suite, powered by research into big data, machine learning, perception, analytics and intelligent bots. Among the new additions to the Cortana Intelligence Suite, is the ‘Microsoft Cognitive Services’, which is a collection of intelligence Application Program Interface (APIs) that allows systems to see, hear, speak, understand and interpret the users’ needs using natural methods of communication. However, the Cortana Developer Preview is available now, so that developers can get started working with the new features. PTI