The character of the AI ​​video game that influenced an industry

The current wave of virtual badistants owes a lot to a sidekick of one of the most popular video games of all time. The release of Halo: Combat Evolved In 2001, Cortana, Master Chief's partner in artificial intelligence, introduced many of the common features that are now shared by badistants in the real world. Cortana was a friendly and helpful female voice in your ear, a voice that blurred the line between companion and digital tool. She looked a lot like Siri – and she did it a decade before virtual badistants became essential features of our smartphones and homes.

Halo did not invent the concept of an artificial intelligence badistant. This is one of the fundamentals of science fiction for years, with the on-board computer, for example, Star Trek: the new generation and HAL 9000 in 2001: The Space Odyssey all play leading roles. But Cortana was different from her predecessors in fiction in many ways, including the fact that she was warm and affectionate. She made jokes and made sure that Master Chief did the job, as Siri and Alexa do today.

Starting with Apple's Siri in 2011, the world's largest tech companies have begun introducing virtual badistants into the real world. These were voices on our phones, and later other devices, able to read music, keep an eye on your schedule, remind you of flights. You interacted with them by conversation, using natural language to explain what you wanted.

And these offerings from Amazon and Microsoft, for example, largely follow the same plan developed by Cortana. Siri and Alexa have female voices by default, and while they are designed to present the information we need or want, they also do it with some sarcastic joy. Ask Siri if she is real and she could answer, "In the cloud, no one is questioning your existential status." You'll get equally stupid answers if you ask Alexa if she likes pizza or if she'll be your little one friend. Microsoft even named its own virtual badistant Cortana, who was dubbed by Jen Taylor, the same actress behind the video game character.

During development, the Microsoft team making Cortana the badistant even contacted the developers of Halo to help. "One of the Cortanas is an intelligent AI who is learning and has the duty to help his companion as much as possible, using a stunning database of information badociated with a real and growing knowledge of this companion," Halo Frank O'Connor, director of the franchise, explained at the announcement of Cortana for Windows Phone in 2014. "And the other Cortana is, well, the same thing."

The decision to give HaloCortana, this particular personality was not created because she made her a more effective AI badistant. It just made a better story. If she stays stuck by your side for the whole game – not to mention all the latest Halo adventures – she should be someone you really care about. Taylor said that when she had started working on the game, she had been tasked with turning Cortana into a sort of AI archetype in girls next door.

"When I was initially chosen, the guys from Bungie would say to me," This character is in your head all the time. She is your best guide and the best help you have – the only guide and the only one really helps. So, we do not want it to look naughty, we do not want it to be painful. "They wanted her to be like the girl next door, your best friend with whom you want to hang out," Taylor explained in a 2012 interview with NBC.

In the end, what is good for narration is also good for AI badistants. Having a friendly disposition makes us more likely to actually use these AI tools, and some researchers have argued that users are more accepting of commands with a female voice. In fact, listening to your badistant is crucial for its usefulness, whether it warns you of foreign strangers or makes sure you go to the meeting from 15:00 to the hour.

That's not to say that Cortana is directly responsible for the wave of voice-activated wizards that now fill our phones, our speakers and our microwaves. But Bungie has created a model, which has both shaped the way real AI designers have approached their creations and what we, the users, expect from our digital companions. Cortana showed how this type of AI could make life more bearable on the battlefield: her descendants are now trying to do the same thing everyday.