Microsoft, Amazon Collaborate So Personal Assistants Can Chat

REDMOND, WA — Two Seattle-area tech giants announced a new partnership Wednesday: Each company's personal assistant will now be available across each company's devices. That means you'll be able to access Amazon's Alexa via Microsoft's Cortana, and vice versa.

"I talk to Cortana every day — at home, work and on-the-go — to get information about my day, to set reminders so I don’t forget things, and to answer my questions," Microsoft Vice President of Cortana Engineering Andrew Shuman wrote in a blog post Wednesday. "But I don’t just use one digital assistant. I also frequently talk to Alexa to listen to audio books or to add things to my shopping list. Because people use and interact with all kinds of products, we’re very excited to announce a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Amazon between Cortana and Alexa that will offer more choice, value and access to both intelligent personal assistants."

The cross-device capability will be available before the end of 2017 on PCs running Microsoft 10 and Amazon devices such as the Echo and Echo Dot. The capability will be available later on Android and iOS devices.

Watch: Soon, These Two Digital Assistants Will Be Able To Talk To Each Other

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos released a joint press release about the collaboration — a first for the two CEOs who are located near each other but still compete in some areas, like cloud computing.

“The world is big and so multifaceted. There are going to be multiple successful intelligent agents, each with access to different sets of data and with different specialized skill areas. Together, their strengths will complement each other and provide customers with a richer and even more helpful experience,” Bezos said in the release.

The other big personal assistants, Google Assistant and Apple's Siri, are still independent, although Bezos and Nadella said they would be open to collaboration.

Microsoft is headquartered in suburban Redmond, which is about 13 miles from Amazon's downtown Seattle campus.

Image via Microsoft