Skype Video Bots Join Cortana As True Live Assistants
In the very near future, Skype users will be able to use Cortana to be more of an everyday assistant than it ever has been before. Cortona will be able to be spoken to and asked to schedule calendar appointments from within Skype. Cortona will work within Skype to provide you with links to subjects, bring up information cards, and – if you need it – Cortana will even send private messages to you so as to not interrupt the conversation you're currently in the middle of.
Cortana can also speak with an broker a conversation for you with a 3rd-party bot. Instead of your assistant doing all the work for you, the assistant will ask a bot – presumably a better-suited bot for whatever task is at hand – to do the work.
Cortona will be doing all of this within the desktop version of Skype as well as the Windows Phone version of Skype.
In both the Windows Phone and desktop versions of Skype, Cortana will be scanning text to surface information for you – with links to the web – and will be at your assistance whenever you need for chat questions and answers.
Cortona will also be creepy for you, if you want.
If you're about to speak to someone you know in a state like Wisconsin, the chat window might open with a suggestion from Cortana. Cortana might suggest that you say something like "Hey there, we should hit the Packers game when I visit Green Bay next week!"
Developers will be able to access a new Skypebot SDK sooner than later. Developers will be able to use this SDK to create bots with which users will be able to chat. Very strange!
Microsoft's Skype team's Lilian Rincon suggests that "this is just the beginning."
"We are also bringing intelligence into virtual conversations with Skype for HoloLens."
Rincon proceeded to show a demonstration of a woman speaking with her parents remotely – with HoloLens – seeing and learning how to fix a piece of electronics remotely.
Skype's integration of Cortana may lead to us speaking with bots and bots and bots – sooner than we think!
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