Microsoft is working to cram its new ChatGPT-powered Bing Chat service into each product it makes, and beginning this fall it is going to be a built-in function of Home windows 11. It is sensible, then, that Microsoft can be working to close down its final stab at an automatic digital assistant—the standalone Cortana app in Home windows 10 and Home windows 11 goes to cease working this month, and Microsoft is pointing customers towards Bing Chat and Home windows Copilot as a substitute.

Some customers have reported that the Cortana app has already stopped working totally following an app replace. On a PC working a completely up-to-date model of Home windows 11 22H2, my Cortana app nonetheless features, but it surely instructed me that “Cortana in Home windows goes away quickly.”

Microsoft has been pulling again on its assist for Cortana for years, ending assist for the iOS and Android variations in early 2021 and eradicating it from the Home windows taskbar in Home windows 11 just a few months later. Earlier than that, Microsoft had already eliminated most third-party app integrations, refocusing the assistant totally on primary productiveness duties and Bing searches.

Cortana started life on Microsoft’s ill-fated Home windows Cellphone platform within the early 2010s, the place it served the identical common operate as Apple’s Siri and Google Now (and, later, the Google Assistant): a hands-free strategy to work together along with your telephone that additionally tried to foretell what you’d want subsequent, all filtered by way of a “cute” “persona.”

Cortana got here to the desktop with Home windows 10 in 2015, and to Android and iOS just a few months after that. By 2019, the voice assistant was already being progressively deprioritized in new Home windows 10 builds.

Along with Home windows Copilot, Microsoft says that individuals who depend on Cortana in Home windows must also think about using the “voice entry” accessibility function in Home windows 11, which helps speech-to-text capabilities and restricted window administration even when your laptop would not have an lively Web connection.

For now, Microsoft says that Cortana will nonetheless be included in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Groups. These variations of Cortana are additionally prone to be swept away by new AI-driven variations, ultimately. Earlier than too lengthy, it might solely be doable to listen to Cortana in its unique type: as an AI helper within the Halo franchise.

Itemizing picture by Cortana