nah

Siri, while not great, handles timers, reminders, and dumbshit like that just fine without typing. I have yet to find another good use for these assistants.

This will make the 3 people who actually used Cortana mildly disgruntled.

..similar to what? SIMILAR TO WHAT!?

Cortana isn't dead. The brand of it is. Bing ai is almost what Cortana was supposed to be

Nah, I use Siri daily for simple tasks. Turning on lights, setting timers, adding things to my groceries list. She’s simple, but perfectly fine for simple tasks.

Please leave her the fuck alone :’)

Microsoft isn't giving up on assistants (as per the article), its just going down a different route, more AI focused. This is sensible because Cortana is a flop, nobody uses it, there is no need to leave it running.

I'm certain Apple has the same plans around AI, however people still use Siri all the time. It's not a flop, so it may as well stay running as more and more AI works its way over to it or its replacement.

It's really weird to me that anyone would want it shut down when it's so easy to just not use it.

Nice cut, Memmy.

This article sounds like it was written by someone who barely understands what a voice assistant is, let alone how a corporation works. Very dumb. Is 9to5 using GPT instead of paying journalists?

Please not Siri, it ain’t smart but it does everything I want - the basics and reasonably easily.

I remember Cortana fondly when it was a great blend of Siri and Google Now but naturally it and Windows Phone got left to rot, and made her useless on desktop Windows since they forfeited my pocket.

I tolerated Google Assistant for a bit but ditched Android when Google pushed updates to remove the “okay Google with the screen off” feature from my Moto Z Play and gaslit the internet - stating it was never supported in closed support threads, the chipset didn’t support it and promoted it as a (then new) Pixel 1 feature. I figured Apple wouldn’t remove “Hey Siri” and so far several years in it’s still holding true.

It’s too embedded into their services at the moment. Like you can’t even use CarPlay unless you enable Siri. I like the idea but in contrast they could also just try to make it good lol.

I don't understand why the author sees AI as an alternative to Siri rather than a potential upgrade.

No. Siri is useful, especially when you can’t type. I use Siri a lot on my bike. Apple just needs to fix Siri.

Should've killed Cortana in Halo 4

I shut off asuch of Cortana on my desktop as I could. Not a wanted feature.

I can only imagine they're shutting it down to replace it with something with different branding, based on an LLM. Microsoft has gone all-in on LLMs and I'm sure they'd love some of that virtual assistant action if they were able to differentiate themselves.

A counterpoint: https://youtu.be/l9P7rp-6pSg

Found from: https://old.lemmy.world/post/2629438

M$ was banking on horny teenagers to use Cortana. Thing is, they forgot the sexy bits.

Apple can’t kill Siri. Too many of its solutions rely on voice as the dominant input method. Accessibility for Mac / iOS, HomePod, CarPlay, Apple Watch, Vision Pro, AirPods, etc.

Also, Siri has about a 3rd of the voice assistant market, Cortana use was way below that.

God no. I use it when I can’t reach the phone. It isn’t perfect, but it still is valuable

I’m kinda glad it’s over. Cortana killed the very useful voice commands on Xbox (alongside the size and price of the Kinect).

Instead of “Xbox On” you had to actually instruct Cortana to turn it on. The same for the quick screenshot or changing the channel on TV or whatever. It was so good, my whole family was using it and this was in 2014ish when voice control was still fairly new. Cortana ruined all of that for a virtual assistant that barely worked and made Siri look like AI.

I use my Google assistant all the time...

...mostly to set timers.

Great for it though!