As millions gather to watch the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on 19 May 2018, Sky News — Europe’s leading entertainment company — will introduce a new interactive experience for the eagerly-awaited event. In addition to enjoying live coverage of the wedding, viewers around the world will be able to access the Sky News “Royal Wedding: Who’s Who” app to follow real-time updates of wedding guests as they enter St George’s Chapel.
The innovative app will leverage machine learning to enrich live-streamed video content, providing users with up-to-date insights as the event is happening. The application is the result of a Sky News collaboration between Amazon Web Services (AWS), UI Centric and GrayMeta.
Utilising the latest machine learning technologies to create insightful metadata of identified guests as they arrive at the event, the GrayMeta Platform will use Amazon Rekognition video and image analysis services for real-time identification of Royal Wedding guests and tag them with related biographical information.
John Motz, chief technology officer at GrayMeta, said in a press statement, “The Who’s Who app will provide viewers with an unprecedented experience which will enable them to participate as the event unfolds… By harnessing the power of automated metadata creation, this experience exemplifies the future of how content will be viewed across platforms and technologies.”
During the event, AWS will capture live video and send it to cloud-based AWS Elemental Media Services for multiscreen viewing optimisation. Sky News will use the Amazon CloudFront content delivery network to unify the content for rapid distribution to viewers. And UI Centric will utilise metadata created by GrayMeta display an enhanced viewing experience to viewers.
Reportedly, over 5,000 members of the media have been accredited to cover the event. The royal spokesman for Kensington Palace has also affirmed that there will be no official guest list, and no heads of state are invited — not even British Prime Minister Theresa May. “All the invitees have a direct relationship with the couple,” the spokesman said in a briefing at Buckingham palace.
