THE FIRST GLIMPSES of Microsoft’s answer to Siri and Google Now have appeared a month before its official announcement.

Codenamed Cortana, the name of the artificial intelligence character that features heavily in the Halo series, the personal assistant will be included in the latest update for Windows Phone.

Unleash The Phones has published a video demonstrating the setup process for it. Once you’ve signed in with your Microsoft account, it will ask users what nickname you want to be called and a number of questions that will determine what kind of information it displays.

Questions like what the most enjoyable parts of your day are, your main motivations for taking part in an activity, and what type of news sections you go to first will be asked first before it’s activated.

Once these actions are completed, it saves them into its Notebook system – where stores data like personal info, location data, behaviours, and reminders – which it will refer to whenever you ask it something.

So far, it only responds to questions instead of displaying information it believes will be useful to you like Google Now, but that could easily change before between now and its release.

Another feature is the do-not-disturb mode called “quiet hours”. Alongside the usual options associated with the feature, it will allow phone calls from those who ring twice within three minutes, in case of an emergency, or if the caller is part of a favourite “inner circle” list.

Microsoft is expected to unveil both Cortana and a developer preview of Windows Phone 8.1 at its Build conference next month.

Read: Microsoft plans to have Xbox Live powering iOS and Android games >

Read: Nokia moves into new territory by launching its first Android smartphone >