When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle say “I do” at their royal wedding next week, online viewers tuning into the Sky News stream will not have to guess the names of international celebrities and British nobility in attendance. Instead, the U.K. broadcaster will use artificial intelligence to identify famous guests as they make their grand entrances at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle — displaying the invitees’ names and details about how they are connected to the royal couple.
Dubbed “Who’s Who Live,” Sky News announced the live-stream service last week in partnership with Amazon.com and several data and engineering firms. As the 600 guests enter the chapel, Sky News will highlight notable attendees using Amazon Rekognition, a cloud-based technology that can recognize and compare faces in images and video using artificial intelligence. (Amazon.com chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Along with identifying the wedding guests, the live-stream service will also show facts about them, Sky News said, using captions and on-screen graphics through the company’s app. The data will be displayed alongside the video of the procession into the chapel.
“This new functionality allows Royal Wedding viewers greater insight into one of the biggest live events of the year, wherever they are,” David Gibbs, director of digital news and sports products at Sky News, said in a news release. “We’re excited by the software’s potential and ability to give audiences new ways of consuming content.”
The royal wedding is expected to command a massive global audience. More than 5,000 members of the media have been accredited to cover the event.
