Microsoft has been planning to incorporate its popular voice assistant, Cortana, to every device besides smartphones, computers, and laptops. The company sees that it could be suitable also for appliances like televisions, toasters, and fridges, but it did not happen.
Recently, the Samsung electronics subsidiary Harman Kardon officially announced that it would be dropping Microsoft's virtual assistant from the only smart home speaker supported by it. There will be no more voice assistant for the Invoke speaker when the update starts.
After an update on Wednesday, Mar. 10, Cortana will be disabled, and we won't hear "Hey Cortana" anymore upon activating it.
Goodbye Cortana to Harman Kardon Invoke
Thurrott discovered that Harman Kardon cut its ties to Cortana through its Invoke speaker. According to the report, the home and car audio equipment manufacturer will soon release an update to delete Cortana officially. The smart home speaker will revert to a regular Bluetooth speaker by removing the said virtual assistant.
The statement from Harman Kardon came after Microsoft's announcement on its plans last year. This involves the removal of Cortana from different devices.
At the time of writing, Harman Kardon said that Cortana's service on the Invoke speaker would be terminated in the next few months. Moreover, the digital assistant will also bid goodbye to Android and iOS platforms, as well to the Surface Headphones owned by the tech giant.
Microsoft has been eyeing Cortana to be a potential virtual assistant that can come at par with other known voice assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa.
While Cortana is not available on a wide range of gadgets, the company sees it as a stepping stone for its enterprise improvements. This came after Microsoft decided to separate Cortana in the search tab of Windows 10. This paved the way for the virtual assistant to be completely 'silent' after the OS setup process was finished.
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Harman Kardon's Invoke Used to be a Good Smart Home Speaker
In a report by Engadget's Steve Dent, Harman Kardon's Invoke has been an impressive speaker upon its launch in 2017. It features compatibility on several devices, together with its highly- refined sound quality. At the time, Cortana was already showing weakness through its limited access to different skills.
The Samsung-owned firm said that the decision was irrevocable in the process because Microsoft is the one that finalized to remove Cortana as Invoke's support system.
The latter even offered a gift card which costs $50 as Microsoft's offer of reconciliation to its buyers. This happened when the tech giant said that Cortana will now part ways with Invoke.
It is evident that through the removal of Cortana on smart home gadgets and devices, Alexa and Google Assistant now lag behind. Its capabilities do not meet the demand of the people. That is why Microsoft came up to limit what it can do to the devices.
In the future, we could be seeing either two instances that Microsoft might embrace: first, the company could be bringing an upgrade to Cortana through its cross-usability to other platforms, or second, the company could now be exploring other options that could replace Cortana.
Either way, it could work through introducing another voice assistant or reintroducing an improved Cortana this time.
Related Article: You Can Now Say 'Hey Cortana' To Activate Voice Commands With Cortana For Android, But There's A Catch
This article is owned by Tech Times.
Written by Joen Coronel