It’s official: Microsoft is calling it quits on Cortana

When Apple first announced Siri, it sparked a digital assistant war that saw many companies try to do their own thing. We got Google Assistant, Alexa, Bixby, Hound, and Cortana. Some of those digital assistants have since fallen by the wayside, and it looks like Cortana is the latest to join the list.

According to a support document published on Microsoft’s website, the company has announced that they will be ending support for Cortana on Windows. Support for the digital assistant will be coming to an end this month, August 2023, where Microsoft says that they will no longer support Cortana in Windows as a standalone app.

This doesn’t really come as a surprise. Over the years, the battle between digital assistants has been fierce and ultimately, Google Assistant and Alexa largely won, thanks to smart home devices like smart speakers and smart displays.

Another reason this doesn’t come as a surprise is because of Microsoft’s recent adoption of AI, where they rolled out a ChatGPT variant to Bing which now pretty much does what Cortana used to do, but smarter, faster, and better overall. Some think that maybe it’s time Apple calls it quits on Siri too, but it remains to be seen if Apple will push forward or if they might retire their own digital assistant one day.