Before Cortana, there was Louise and was integrated into Windows 8 (video)

Here is an early look to what Microsoft envisioned for Cortana, personal digital assistant, to work in Windows 8. The video demo is from 2011 and comes from the Microsoft Research team, of course, it wasn’t called “Cortana” back then, the company referred the project as “Louise Personal Assistant”.

The demo shows a person triggering what today we know as Cortana by simply swiping from the top and tapping the assistant button. Then the user will just interact with natural language and the software will respond to the request. But here is the thing, in this early demo of Louise Personal Assistant, it didn’t answer back to the user as we see today with a fully functional personal assistant in Windows Phone 8.1.

What we need to take from this video demo is that it seems that Microsoft is committed to bring a personal assistant to Windows. The video shows that they are trying, for a few years now, but it’s unclear when the software giant will fully deploy the technology to the masses.

Source Microsoft via Neowin

About the author

Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 14 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 20 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me.