There's nothing like a catfight to draw attention. Microsoft pits Cortana against Siri in its latest ad, not just to poke fun but to drive a serious point across about functionality.
Microsoft has been relatively mum about Cortana, letting Siri take the limelight where digital assistants are concerned. This time though, the company pulled all stops to not only showcase Cortana but to mock Siri upfront.
Titled "Happy Anniversary," the ad starts out with Cortana and Siri side by side. A man tells Cortana to remind him to greet his wife happy anniversary the next time she calls. Cortana complies, Siri tells him "Oh, I cannot do that." He then tells Cortana to remind him to buy flowers when he's near any flower shop. Cortana takes note of the request, Siri replies "I can't do that either." Excited about his plans for the night, he tells Cortana it's going to be a great one and the digital assistant reminds him to leave at a certain time to beat traffic. Siri concludes "Now that is a smartphone."
Siri was definitely the target, but Microsoft also takes a subtle jab at iPhones through the ad. How? Cortana was running on a low-end Lumia 635. Siri, on the other hand, was on an iPhone 5s, Apple's most recent smartphone offering. If Cortana can handle reminders based on people and location as well as send traffic alerts on a low-end model, imagine what it can do on a high-end Windows Phone. Siri, despite running on a high-end iPhone 5, was not able to handle anything that the man requested.
And to have Siri concede! It wasn't able to do anything but it recognizes Cortana as what a smartphone should be.
If Cortana sounds familiar, it's because the digital assistant is the same Cortana from the Halo series. It's even being voiced by the same actress who did the voice-overs for the video game, Jen Taylor. Cortana was demonstrated for the first time at the 2014 Microsoft BUILD Developer Conference, launched as a key component for future Windows Phones. It is still in its beta version but it has already been made available to Windows Phone users in the U.S. Cortana is expected to roll out to users in other parts of the world by the end of 2014 or early 2015.
