Skip to main content

Microsoft injects Cortana with AI so she can organize your meetings for you

microsfot speech recognition cortanaface
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Today’s digital assistants, whether Apple’s Siri, Google Now, or Microsoft’s Cortana, are constantly evolving to provide more ways to make our lives simpler and more manageable. And in some cases, new capabilities can be turned on at the server, giving us new functionality without needing to update our devices.

One of Cortana’s key strengths is how Microsoft continuously adds new integrations with other applications and operating systems. The company often creates specific projects aimed at extending Cortana’s capabilities, and the Microsoft Office blog has announced the latest one — artificial intelligence aimed at making scheduling meetings more efficient.

Recommended Videos

The project is code-named Calendar.help, and it’s a Microsoft incubation effort that applies AI technology — gained when the company acquired startup Genee in August 2016 — to Outlook calendars. The Microsoft Research team is heading up the project, which enables Cortana to work in the background to parse information in outgoing emails and then add them to your calendar with some intelligence.

To check out Calendar.help, you first need to sign up for the preview waitlist. Once you’re accepted, you will be asked to provide permissions to the service to access your email and calendar. Cortana will then work in the background on any email where you add her to the cc: line, looking for references to meeting length, timing, and location.

cortana-calendar-help
Image used with permission by copyright holder

When she finds those sorts of references, Cortana will then propose times directly to attendees included in the email without bothering you with additional emails. When all attendees have confirmed a time, Cortana will then create an event in your calendar and issue invites to the attendees. Microsoft touts the conversational nature of the interactions, which makes it seem like an actual human assistant — and not a digital assistant — is doing the organizing.

cortana-calendar-help-2
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Today’s digital assistants are evolving into one of the primary ways that machine intelligence is being integrated directly into our personal and professionals lives. With projects like Calendar.help, Microsoft is extending Cortana beyond our own devices and into our interactions with other people.

Mark Coppock
Mark Coppock is a Freelance Writer at Digital Trends covering primarily laptop and other computing technologies. He has…
Grammarly’s new ChatGPT-like AI generator can do a lot more than proofread your writing
GrammarlyGO's Rewrite for Length feature is shown.

Grammarly, one of the biggest names in writing tools, is adding AI-generated text to its repertoire on the heels of the wild popularity of ChatGPT. Known as GrammarlyGO, this new tool is focused on improving writing rather than replacing the writer.

GrammarlyGO will roll out in beta form to existing users in April. All tiers, including developers, business, education, and premium users, will have access. You can even use GrammarlyGO with a free account.

Read more
Forget Dall-E, you can sign up to create AI-generated videos now
A frame from an AI-generated video in claymation style.

Dall-E, ChatGPT, and other AI-generation technologies continue to amaze us. Still, AI image-generation tools like Midjourney might seem boring once you see the new, AI-powered video-generation abilities that will soon be available to us all.

Runway provides an advanced online video editor that offers many of the same features as a desktop app. The company has distinguished its service from others, however, by pioneering the use of AI tools that help with various time-consuming video chores, such as masking out the background.

Read more
Microsoft is bringing ChatGPT to your browser, and you can test it out right now
Microsoft's redesigned Bing search engine.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed in a private briefing with the press that a ChatGPT-powered version of the Edge browser and Bing search engine is available now. The overhauled search and web browsing experience is designed for natural-language questions, replacing critical aspects of the browser with AI tools.

That might sound familiar. Google and other search engines have been leveraging AI for several years to compile search results, but Microsoft's take is different. It's "your AI copilot for the web," offering up new search, answer, chat, and create functions.

Read more