Cyber mind beats Paul the octopus

Microsoft's "personal assistant", Cortana, has become an even better predictor of World Cup results than Paul the German octopus in 2010.

Cortana recently gained the ability to predict the outcome of football matches in an update and immediately accurately called the winner of the next four World Cup games.

So since the new service went live at the weekend, the artificially intelligent assistant has a 100% hit rate - which is better than the record of Paul.

Cortana's prediction for yesterday was that France and Germany would go through to the quarter-finals.

Microsoft said: "[ Cortana] evaluates the strength of each team through factors such as previous win/loss/tie record and margin of victory in these contests, adjusted for location since home field advantage is a known bias."

Bookmakers' odds are also taken into account.