A cluster of digital assistants you’ve probably never heard of—plus Spotify, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana—are part of a new initiative enabling multiple wake words on a single device, including those running Windows 10.

Essentially, you’ll be able to ask a generic device for a particular service directly, such as telling Spotify to play a particular song. Today, assistants like Alexa serve as a concierge of sorts, requiring you to tell them to play a particular song using Spotify, as opposed to YouTube or some other service.

In fact, the new Voice Interoperability Initiative (VII) seems tailor-made for Windows 10 19H2, which includes the capability for multiple digital assistants to live on the lock screen. Originally, the target candidates were Microsoft’s own Cortana, of course, and Amazon Alexa, which went through a prolonged courtship before Alexa became integrated inside Windows 10. (You should be able to type or tell Cortana to launch Alexa inside the search bar right now. In 19H2, you should just be able to say “Hey Alexa” to trigger Amazon’s assistant.) 

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