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Microsoft just bought an AI Startup Genee and now wants to turn it into your Personal Assistant

by Felix Omondi
Microsoft just bought an AI Startup Genee and now wants to turn it into your Personal Assistant

Genee is an Artificial Intelligence startup founded by Ben Cheung and Charles Lee. It uses natural language (what normal humans would speak to each other) and an optimized decision-making algorithm to provide users virtual assistant services. Genee is so good that some are saying it is almost as good as having your own human virtual assistant.

Now, this may come as a surprise to some, but Genee is better than Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and any other digital assistants software out there. Well, that is just my opinion, but it must be. Otherwise why would tech giant Microsoft buy it if they were confident their digital assistant Cortana was better?

Yes, Microsoft has bought Genee at an undisclosed amount (which means really big bucks), and the two founders Ben Cheung and Charles Lee will now join the Redmond tech giant staff count. Microsoft made this announcement on Monday.

About Genee

Microsoft just bought an AI Startup Genee and now wants to turn it into your Personal AssistantGenee was found in 2014. One of its talked about feature, is its ability to automatically curate schedule entries in your calendar by you giving it access to your emails. Say for instance, you are emailing a client, whom you would like to meet in the near future. You two are both busy people so getting the time and venue right the first time and fast is very crucial.

When you are sending out the invite for a meeting with the client, simply cc Genee as you would with a human personal assistant. Genee will automatically understand that you are looking for a free slot in your schedule to have that meeting. It will then take it up from there, find a slot in your calendar, and send out an invite to your client when your schedule will be free.

You will never have to worry about making back and forth emails with your clients again. Let Genee do all the arrangements for you.

What does Microsoft plan to do with Genee?

Not kill Cortana! We don’t expect Microsoft to kill its own digital assistant Cortana, even though she ‘got nothing on Genee’. If anything, Genee is the one to be killed and her smart feature used to make Cortana possibly as smart as Genee if not better. Now that Microsoft has hired the two developers that made Genee, there is high expectations the company will put the two to revamp Cortana features.

Microsoft could also use Genee in its Office 365. If the blog post by Rajesh Jha, corporate VP for Outlook and Office 365 is anything to go by. He says he is “confident the Genee team will help us [Microsoft] further our ambition to bring intelligence into every digital experience.”

That being said, let’s sit back and wait for the pesky Windows 10 update to keep rolling in. Perhaps you boot up your PC one day, and find an even smarter Cortana waiting to do all your bidding, like Genee does.

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