Microsoft Cortana seems on track to rival intelligent car systems if its announced integration on a Nissan car at CES 2017 is any indication.
Cortana And Nissan Self-Driving Technology
Aside from its current capabilities as a smart assistant, buried deep in the Nissan demo were flashes of its power that could lead into its complete takeover of an entire automated vehicle in the same manner it can now take charge of smart homes.
In the Nissan demo video, Cortana was asked questions like "What is my schedule?" At some point, it even volunteered to perform some tasks such as changing the route based on real-time traffic conditions.
The capabilities are not quite new and rival AIs like Siri and the Google Assistant also provide similar contextual voice assistant service.
At one point, however Cortana fired back, "Shall I engage auto park?" This should now showcase what seems to be the ultimate destination of Microsoft's initiatives in the area of automated vehicles.
Microsoft Technology In The Background
In a recent statement, however, Microsoft did not dwell on this aspect. The company merely touted its so-called Connected Vehicle Platform, based on its Microsoft Azure cloud platform. This seems to largely relegate Microsoft more on the backend, gathering input both from the car and the passenger so that automakers can build on the data to develop proprietary automotive technologies.
"Microsoft's cloud will do the heavy lifting by ingesting huge volumes of sensor and usage data from connected vehicles, and then helping automakers apply that data in powerful ways," Microsoft stressed. "It's a living, agile platform that starts with the cloud as the foundation and aims to address five core scenarios that our partners have told us are key priorities: predictive maintenance, improved in-car productivity, advanced navigation, customer insights and help building autonomous driving capabilities."
Here, Cortana only forms one of the components of a bundle of products under the Microsoft Connected Vehicle. The company has purportedly shut any suggestion down that it is entering the self-driving car business.
Cortana's Potential
Regardless of that statement, Cortana's AI capabilities could eventually propel it to an increasingly dominant position in the future to the point that it takes full control of the car or at least serves as the bridge in the car-passenger interaction.
At CES, BMW also announced that it will be integrating Cortana into its automated vehicles. The German automaker has so far cited the smart assistant's utility with respect to enhancing user experiences.
One key statement, however, revealed that BMW intends to implement all of Cortana's capabilities, complementing its own gesture controls.
One should remember that aside from the basic tasks, Cortana — at this stage — is already able to control hardware. It can turn Wi-Fi or Bluetooth off and it could even set different user modes based on different hardware settings.
It takes little imagination to conclude that Cortana could also be doing the same actions in fully automated vehicles in the future.
"Microsoft is not building its own connected car," Peggy Johnson, business development executive at Microsoft, said. "Instead, we want to help automakers create connected car solutions that fit seamlessly with their brands."
The possibility of Cortana running the show is not entirely inimical to that position.
