Cortana Has Answered 6 Billion Voice Queries Confirms Voice Search Is The Future

Cortana is one of the most popular Windows 10 apps, both on the PC and on the Mobile platform, with more than 6 billion voice queries answered since Windows 10 was launched. Although there’s still room for debate when it comes to the accuracy of the search results, one thing is sure: Cortana’s performance has visibly improved since it was launched.

The announcement was made at the SMX event by Lynne Kjolso, General Manager, Global Search Sales and Service at Microsoft. The success of Cortana’s adoption rate among users is underlined by the fact that natural language question queries increased by 60% year-over-year.

Kjolso also predicts that with the rise of Cortana, in the next few years, voice search could become the main search method used by users. Since many voice search platforms rely on artificial intelligence technologies, the search results will get more accurate in time. The more you use AI apps, the more they learn and the better they become.

This news has definitely been heard by Apple, since the Cupertino giant is preparing to launch its Siri app to the desktop platform as well. However, Microsoft’s Cortana has the upperhand since users have already got used to it, and Microsoft has had more time to upgrade and improve its personal assistant.

That shift from typing in a query to a voice query and natural language is happening, I think, much faster than we anticipated.

If we can power those messaging conversations with the machine learning and intelligence of Cortana, plus bots, that creates a really rich, fast, modern experience of getting stuff done through the power of search, and we feel that’s where the experience is heading. That’s a space that we intend to lead in.