Cortana to scan emails to provide help with calendar management

Microsoft has added two new options in its Insider build of Windows 10 that should help keep track of written appointments that are not yet in a calendar. The features will initially only be available in the English-language US and UK versions of the OS.

Cortana will help users keep to agreements made, such as a promise made via email along the lines of “I can pick up those movie tickets Tuesday night” or that a certain deadline has been set. To do this, Cortana scans users’ emails in a similar way as Cortana already does to track flights or track parcels.

The other option is that Cortana uses the calendar to keep track of whether certain appointments are early or late and whether an appointment does not fit in relation to other appointments. These features are familiar in a similar form to people who use Google services such as Gmail.

Cortana uses machine learning to understand the language used in emails and deduce that there is an obligation somewhere. The tool was created in collaboration with Microsoft Research. The feature is initially only available on Windows 10 installations that use the US or UK language setting. There should also be an update for the Cortana clients of Android and iOS soon.

An interview on The Verge shows that the scanning of e-mails is done locally and in principle no data is sent to Microsoft’s servers unless the user wants to get a reminder on other devices. It is also possible to disable the function completely.