Digital assistants are becoming more and more common these days, and tech companies have been largely focused on improving their capabilities. The hardest thing they're trying to achieve? Making them more human.
There are cases where these assistants – which many, including Microsoft, call “personal assistants” – give completely unexpected answers.
That's exactly what happened when Twitter user Maneesh Juneja told Cortana that he was bleeding. The assistant responded as if she didn't care. "Okay" and "Interesting" were some of her responses, even though it was obvious that Cortana should at least have displayed an emergency phone number on the screen for the man who needed to quickly call emergency services.
The tweet caught the attention of many, including Microsoft, and the software giant updated Cortana to show genuine concern for the owner who was bleeding to death. The company modified Cortana's responses to inform people what to do when they are bleeding to death, while also providing quick shortcuts to search for more information online on how to deal with the problem.
There's no shortcut yet to call emergency services, although in this case, the easy way is to simply tell Cortana to "call 100" and the digital assistant will do it.
There may be more to this update, and Cortana may offer more helpful responses regarding medical emergencies, responding more specifically to users' commands. Microsoft hasn't provided any more information yet, but the company will undoubtedly spend some more time refining this aspect of the assistant in the future.
The digital assistant Cortana is now a core feature not only for Windows devices, but also for Android and iOS, with Microsoft trying to turn it into a more widely adopted app, replacing the available assistants on each platform.
