We have long known that Intelligent Assistants must talk to one another in order to carry out the biddings of mere mortals, meaning the end users. The topic was front and center at the very first Intelligent Assistants Conference in 2014 in SF, as documented in local TV coverage that culminated with Stefan Weitz, then a Microsoft exec, asserting that he was sure that Cortana and Domino’s mobile virtual assistant Dom were “already best friends.”

Three years on the bonds between multiple intelligent assistants are more conspicuously starting to take shape. In a press release issued by Amazon, Microsoft and Amazon announced that they are collaborating to get Alexa and Cortana talking to one another. It will soon be possible for Alexa to “Open Cortana” on a variety of devices and, conversely, Windows10 powered devices will enable their users to take command of Alexa “skills” by using Cortana as the conversational interface. All this innovation will be widely available “later this year.”

Master merchandiser Jeff Bezos frames it as a device play, saying “it will be great for Echo owners to gain easy access to Cortana.” In that respect he reaffirms a vision where the existence of hundreds of thousands of skills enhance the value of the devices (be they smart speakers, remote controls, video displays…) that provide access. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella continues to employ Cortana and its speech recognition capabilaities as a way to expand accessibility to and control of popular productivity and communications utilities in the Office 365 Suite.

It’s all good news for end-users because it shows how the giants of Intelligent Assistance will continue to up the ante when defining the capabilities of popular assistants. Amazon and Microsoft contend directly with Google, Apple, Facebook and Samsung and each of them has the wherewithal to fund continuous improvement. It’s great to see that cooperation is the order of the day and two of the giants are defining how they can improve the conversation among multiple platforms and resources.

A precedent has been set for individuals to pick their preferred interface without limiting their access to the wide world of information, services and social graphs that are vital to their lives.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants