In June, Microsoft announced that it would end support for its voice assistant Cortana before the end of 2023. In August, it disabled support for the Cortana Windows 11 app. Today, the The company has revealed plans to remove support for Cortana in Microsoft Teams Rooms and on Teams Display devices.
In fact, according to this blog post, the process of deprecating Cortana in these Microsoft Teams services already began on September 15. In the coming weeks, Teams Rooms and Teams Display devices “will no longer support Cortana voice assistance, both push-speak ability and wake word detection”. The blog adds that these users “will not be able to no longer call Cortana via the Push-to-Talk button” and will soon be unable to use the keyword “Cortana” on these services and devices.
Microsoft said that Teams Rooms and Teams Display users will still have multiple ways to access features that would have been handled through Cortana:
Users who have used Cortana voice assistance to perform tasks such as joining, starting or ending a meeting, adding a name or number, and calling can perform these tasks manually through the console or touchscreen interface. Rooms with smart speakers certified for Teams can continue to use the device for audio and smart meeting transcription.
The blog post adds that Microsoft will “deliver exciting new AI capabilities to help customers work faster and smarter” and that it is “dedicated to helping customers who have adopted Microsoft’s voice assistance technologies to make a smooth transition.
Details about these new AI features were not mentioned. However, it is likely that we could see Teams Rooms and Teams Display devices access generative AI features such as Bing Chat and Windows Copilot with voice assistance options in the very near future. We might find out more later this week from Microsoft. press conference on September 21.
