14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has put a lot of effort into Cortana, the company’s very own digital assistant that’s now available on everything Windows 10, and one of the priorities was to make her as personal as possible.
But despite the fact that Cortana is in essence supposed to be your very own personal assistant, you still can’t do anything that crosses the line with her. For instance, you can’t sexually harass her.
Microsoft's Deborah Harrison explained in an interview with CNN that one of the ideas behind Cortana was to make her work and feel like a human being, so implementing a female personality was essential to achieve this purpose.
Full focus on giving her a female personality
This means that when asked questions regarding her sexual life or when harassing her, Cortana might actually respond in some pretty unexpected ways, Harrison explains. Harrison is one of the writers creating the answers that Cortana gives you when asked various questions.
“If you say things that are particularly a**holeish to Cortana, she will get mad. That's not the kind of interaction we want to encourage,” Deborah Harrison is quoted as saying.
At the same time, the Microsoft employee explains that Cortana behaves just like a typical woman, so you’ll rarely hear her saying sorry (although Redmond might actually create a stereotype here).
“We wanted to be very careful that she didn't feel subservient in any way... or that we would set up a dynamic we didn't want to perpetuate socially,” says Harrison.
It’s no surprise that Microsoft is trying to give Cortana her own female personality. Cortana is named after the female character with the same name from Halo while her actual voice is actress Jen Taylor. And what’s more, she’s not the only female digital assistant available in the tech world right now, as some other companies, including Apple, use female voices to interact with their users.