Microsoft and Amazon are beginning publicly rolling out first Alexa-Cortana integrations. The two companies are taking that step today, following the announcement the two companies made during Microsoft’s Build developer conference, where the two companies shown off the first wave of integrations. This is a rather significant step forward for voice assistants, as Alexa and Cortana are amongst the biggest players out there, along with Siri and Google Assistant, of course.
These integrations will allow users to communicate with Cortana on Amazon’s Echo devices, while Alexa will be accessible on Windows 10-powered computers, and Harman Kardon Invoice speakers, the report says. In the report, it is noted that, at the moment, Cortana and Alexa can be enabled as a skill on the other. So, if you’d like to test out this functionality, you will first have to ask Alexa or Cortana to open up the other in order to launch the setup, presuming that the functionality has been pushed out by Amazon and Microsoft by the time you try it, of course. After you go through the setup process, which consists of account logins and some additional steps, the two digital assistants will be able to communicate with each other, basically.
Some of you may remember that this partnership was announced way back in the summer of 2017, and was supposed to become official by the end of the year, though that did not happen. Well, it’s finally here, for those of you who are interested, and it does seem like a rather important step forward for both companies. Windows 10 users will be able to ship on Amazon using Alexa, for example, while Cortana’s functionality will become available via Echo devices, essentially giving you two digital assistants in one, though it remains to be seen how well will it all work, of course.