Microsoft To Discontinue Cortana For Windows By Year’s End: What We Know

Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortana, might be discontinued as a Windows standalone app in late 2023—the Redmond-based tech big has introduced.

Named after the unreal intelligence-powered assistant in Microsoft’s Halo online game franchise, Cortana was revealed in 2014, nearly a decade in the past.

However, Cortana will proceed to be out there in Outlook cellular, Teams cellular, Microsoft Teams show, and Microsoft Teams rooms, as this alteration solely impacts Cortana in Windows.

“Instead of clicking the Cortana icon and launching the app to start utilizing voice, now you should utilize voice and fulfill your productiveness wants by totally different instruments,” the company said.

Notably, the company also discontinued the Cortana app for both Android and iOS in 2020 and phased out Cortana from the Windows taskbar when Windows 11 launched.

It isn’t clear why Microsoft is gradually phasing out Cortana and exactly when it will be discontinued in the latter part of the year, but this development coincides with the growing dependence on generative AI. Like Google, Microsoft is doubling down on AI-powered work tools—including Bing chatbot, based on OpenAI’s GPT-4, and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Thanks to the growing list of AI-powered products—stemming from the tech giant’s investment worth billions of dollars in OpenAI—it is becoming clearer that, moving forward, the company may remove several other legacy support apps in the future.