Microsoft's new digital assistant is not the beginning of the Terminator. It is Microsoft feverishly pushing and competing with Apple's Siri, and Google Now.

"Cortana" is the titular name of Microsoft's digital assistant. It is scheduled to premiere on to the Windows Phone 8.1 at the upcoming Build conference in early April of this year.

The name Cortana is inspired by a female character that Microsoft adapted from the Halo games. Geeky Gadgets reported that the name Cortana is perhaps a tentative one, since the digital assistant is still in development.

The icon is simply a spinning circle, with similar functions to Apple's Siri, so Cortana will offer its visual indication when it is speaking, thinking, or when it is activated. The users can enable the device to how they would like to be addressed.

Cortana will be powered by Foursquare, Bing and other services to provide users with a powerful database. This sort of database could rival that of Google Now.

Before you get all excited about Cortana, just remember Microsoft also brought us "Clippy," the annoying Office paperclip. Microsoft has been slow to developing anything new in technology; it is in third place next to Apple and Google.

ExtremeTech reports that Microsoft owns a number of speech recognition and synthesis technologies, along with the second largest search engine, Bing. It has been reported that Cortana could not just be a digital assistant, but it could be a central feature in the entire Windows brand, for desktop, mobile, and even Xbox One.

Since Microsoft's annoying "Clippy," it has struggled to dominate the app store with the top sellers on Android and iOS. But the bright side is that Microsoft's personal assistant could define and differentiate the smartphone over the next few years.Cortana offers the best of Siri and Google Now, at least on paper.

Cortana will attempt to learn users' schedule and preferences, manage their social obligations, and constantly bring useful or desired information. The feature can learn your immediate goals from "you're going to the store," to something abstract, "when going to events, I'm often interested in learning."

Besides Cortana, Microsoft has also been working on "Satori," its own knowledge engine. Satori can interpret questions in natural language, find the corresponding data, and then reconstruct the data into a sensibly organized answer from scratch. It sounds fantastic.

While the name Cortana isn't exactly going to be on the top list of baby names, the name Satori is a bit nicer and means awakening, understanding, and comprehension in the Japanese Buddhist language. This could be a new breakthrough for Microsoft in a deluge of technology giants.

Watch a demo video below:

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