While traces of Cortana, the digital voice assistant for Windows Phone, has been spotted in the Windows 10 Technical Preview before, Microsoft is yet to officially announce Cortana’s arrival on PC. The latest release of Windows 10 Technical Preview, build number 9879, however, gives us a concrete proof of Cortana’s imminent launch on the desktop.
Last week, Microsoft released Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9879 to those who have opted for a fast release cadence. If you roam around the zPC settings app (Check the ‘privacy’ section of the settings app), you will see a reference of Cortana there. The description below ‘Cortana and speech personalization reads, “When you use Cortana or speech, your personalization data is used to improve speed recognition, dictation, and text-to-speech. You can go to Bing to manage your cloud data and also clear your local data below. Turn off Cortana and speech to disable personalization.”
There’re a couple of more references of Cortana here and there. For instance, there is a “CortanaUI” shortcut which would supposedly help you launch the personal assistant. As you would hope, there is nothing much you can do with these settings just yet — that is, Cortana isn’t functional yet. But be rest assured that the company is planning to add the voice assistant to the PC.
Microsoft will release the Windows 10 sometime next year. The company will, until then, keep adding new features to the operating system and roll them out to users who have signed up for Windows Insider Preview Program. Interestingly enough, earlier this week, Microsoft software and services chief Julie Larson-Green hinted at the company’s plans to introduce Cortana on “other platforms.”
