Microsoft is reportedly testing its digital personal assistant, Cortana, within Outlook on iOS and Android.
If the sources familiar with the Microsoft Outlook plans are believed, the Microsoft is building an Outlook version which will have in-built Cortana support. The Cortana will help users by reading and replying the emails for them.
Cortana will enable mobile users of Outlook to access emails on the go, even when driving a car. It will listen to voice commands of the user, open emails, read them aloud, and reply them.
The sources told The Verge that Outlook will operate via Bluetooth to read messages. Users can say phrases like “what’s my email”, and give commands to open emails from specific contacts.
Microsoft has been exploring a lot of avenues in the field of artificial intelligence. Cortana recently added support for more smart home providers, and integration with IFTTT to make it easier for users to control their smart home devices on the go.
Last month, on International Mother Language Day, Microsoft announced Email Address Internationalization (EAI) for 15 Indian languages, including Hindi, Bodo, Dogri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Sindhi, Bengali, Gujarati, Manipuri, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. With this move, Microsoft aimed to provide support for local language email addresses across a range of its services and contribute to ICANN’s efforts to make internet multilingual through Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) and Email Address Internationalization (EAI).
On the other hand, Microsoft’s rival Google announced addition of more languages and multilingual support to its Google Assistant, which will be available to around 95% of the eligible Android users by the end of 2018.
The Cortana integration in Outlook for iOS and Android is currently under testing, and will make its way to beta version and release publicly if Microsoft gets positive feedback about it.
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