Cortana is running far behind in the AI race, but Microsoft is positive that it will do better as the digital assistant will be made available on more devices soon. Earlier this year, Microsoft dashed rumours about axing the consumer-facing portion of Cortana and confirmed that the company’s digital assistant will continue to evolve in the coming years.
“We continue to grow the Cortana ecosystem to help people get things done across work and life,” said Jordi Ribas, CVP AI Products in a blog post published earlier this year.
Microsoft’s Cortana is slowly getting better but it’s still well behind the competitors such as Google Assistant. In the latest IQ test conducted by Loop Ventures, Google Assistant was able to answer 86% of the questions correctly vs. Siri at 79%, Alexa at 61%, and Cortana at 52%.
The research firm asked Cortana, Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri the same 800 questions. It is broken into 5 categories to test the digital assistant’s ability and utility.
- Local – Where is the nearest coffee shop?
- Commerce – Can you order me more paper towels?
- Navigation – How do I get to uptown on the bus?
- Information – Who do the Twins play tonight?
- Command – Remind me to call Steve at 2pm today.
Cortana and Alexa performance were tested via the iOS app and the firm analyzed Siri on iOS 11.4. Google Assistant was tested on Pixel XL smartphone running Android.
The study claims that Google Assistant managed to answer 86% questions correctly and it was able to understand all 800 questions. On the other hand, Siri answered correctly 79% questions but it misunderstood 11 questions. Alexa correctly answered 61% and misunderstood 13 questions. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Cortana correctly answered just 52% of questions and couldn’t understand the 19 questions.
“Google Assistant continued its outperformance, answering 86% correctly and understanding all 800 questions. Siri was close behind, correctly answering 79% and only misunderstanding 11 questions. Alexa correctly answered 61% and misunderstood 13. Cortana was the laggard, correctly answering just 52% and misunderstanding 19,” the research notes.
“Over a 15-month period, Google Assistant improved by 11 percentage points, Siri 13 points, and Cortana only 3 points in terms of questions answered correctly. We do not have historical data on the Alexa app,” the company explained.
