ProBeat: Microsoft needs to make the case for Cortana — or leave her to Halo

There wasn’t that much Cortana news this week, but then again there never is. While Microsoft’s plans for Cortana haven’t changed, they are still incredibly puzzling. We know the company has somewhat lost interest in Cortana for consumers and is pushing Alexa instead, so discontinuing the Cortana bot in Skype this week was no surprise. We also know offerings like Microsoft Cognitive Services in the enterprise is key to the company’s strategy, so the Adobe news around voice AI this week is also in line. But Cortana’s overall future is murky, at best.

We asked Microsoft for comment about the Cortana bot in Skype. The company confirmed it was going away, and that other bots weren’t being discontinued, but didn’t elaborate on the reasoning.