Amazon's Bezos Cites 'Multifaceted' World in Alexa-Cortana Announcement

Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana voice engines will be able to communicate later this year, the companies announced Wednesday. Consumers can tell Alexa to “open Cortana” or tell a Windows 10 device to open Alexa, they said. Alexa users will be able to access Cortana to book a meeting, access a calendar or read work email through Office 365 integration, said the companies. Cortana customers will be able to ask Alexa to control their smart home devices, shop on Amazon and interact with Alexa skills built by third-party developers, they said. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos cited a “big” and “multifaceted” world, saying there will be “multiple successful intelligent agents, each with access to different sets of data and with different specialized skill areas.” Together, their strengths “will complement each other” and create richer and “more helpful” experiences, Bezos said.