Microsoft’s Cortana is about to get a hand from the developer community, as it seeks to tackle Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
Prior to the Build conference kicking off in Seattle, the company announced a Cortana Skills Kit SDK that will enable third-party developers to build specific skills for the platform.
Microsoft is building the framework to enable developers to easily convert Alexa Skills or those created for the new Bot Framework Microsoft also announced.
Related: Best Alexa Skills
Many of those new skills will be perfect for the new Harmon Kardon Invoke speaker and the others on the way from the likes of HP and Intel.
The skills will also be available within the Cortana mobile app and Windows 10 PC for easy device to device syncing through the new Microsoft Graph API.
During the opening forays of the Build 2017 keynote, Microsoft demonstrated how some of these third-party skills could be used to tell you when the car needs gas, or to book time-off work via Microsoft Teams.
Do you think Cortana can surpass Alexa? Or is Amazon’s assistant already too far ahead? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.