'Alexa, play Royal message': Amazon's smart speaker to spread Queen Elizabeth's Christmas message
Queen Elizabeth and Alexa
In a year of many firsts, the Royal family of England, too, has decided to take the Christmas celebrations up a notch and let people from all corners of the world listen to the Royal message of the Queen.
To make life easier for people, the Royal family has decided to take a little help from technology and use Amazon's smart speaker, Alexa, to spread the Queen's Christmas Day broadcast.
People all over the world can sim ask "Alexa, play the Queen's Christmas Day message" and the AI-trained speaker will play the recorded message.
This service, for the first time, will be available across all geographic boundaries and will be available for all devices set to English as the primary language — it can be British English, American, Canadian or Indian.
The announcement was made by Amazon recently. "After a challenging year, millions of people from across the Commonwealth will be eagerly awaiting Her Majesty the Queen’s message on Christmas Day," saidEric King, the director of Alexa Europe. "By creating this world-first innovation, just as we did in 2012 with the release of the Queen’s Christmas speech on Kindle, we hope that even more people will be able to enjoy the uplifting words of Her Majesty."
This change has come as for the first time the Queen andDuke of Edinburgh will be staying at the Windsor Castle rather than spending Christmas atSandringham in Norfolk. This will also be the first time the Royal couple will be celebrating Christmas alone, rather than inviting relatives over for a meal. The decision to keep the celebrations hushed has been taken to pay respects to the people who lost their lives and their loved ones to the deadly virus and to make sure the Royal family does not breach any set coronavirus guidelines.
A special arrangement has also been made for people who do not own Amazon's Alexa. Google Home owners can order "OK Google, play BBC Radio 4" at 3pm EST to listen to the Queen's Christmas cheer.
Queen's new dive into the technology comes decades after her first tweet in 2014 and her first televised Christmas broadcast in 1957 — which was welcomed with absolute cheer by the locals.