Ahead of the EuroPride Vienna, which takes place in June 2019, the city has already started celebrating “Love for Everyone.” To mark this amazing moment, the Vienna Tourist Board, Serviceplan Campaign, and Vangardist Magazine decided to help two unexpected beings elegantly exchange vows. But who that might be? We bet you wouldn’t expect to hear this, but the world’s most known artificial assistants just got married. Yes, that’s right! Siri and Alexa can now kiss each other because they have just become wife and wife!
Welcome to the world’s first AI wedding, an event that took place to draw attention towards the LGBTQ-friendly destination of Vienna. Amongst the guests, there were LGBTQ+ members which also included celebrities such as Pandora Nox and Laksmi Wuggenig, posing as the bridesmaids. However, the stars were the two lovely AI ladies, which declared love for each other in front of teams from Serviceplan Campaign and Plan.Net Campaign from Munich together with the Vienna Tourist Board and Vangardist Magazine. The partners were also responsible for documenting the event and translating it into a short video.
Vienna Tourist Board Director of Tourism Norbert Kettner explained how they chose the capital of Austria: “It is a true pleasure and honor to host EuroPride in Vienna from June 1-16, 2019. Vienna is a cosmopolitan kaleidoscope – a modern world city, where different lifestyles, diversity and respect are actively lived and where our many differences are perceived as our greatest strength. EuroPride, with its multifaceted program, is the perfect occasion to celebrate and explore a city that has emerged from being a hidden gem to become a hot spot for the LGBT community.”
The publisher of Vangardist magazine, Julian Wiehl, described the wedding’s unique angle: “With the first wedding of two artificial intelligences, we wanted to show that in 2019, smart devices can marry but not all people. Fortunately, marriage for all exists in Vienna, but in other countries, the LGBTQIA+ community is still discriminated against. The EuroPride makes an important contribution to further reduce prejudices and malicious bad positions.”
The ceremony was possible thanks to Alexa’s skill, “The Pride Skill”, which was developed by Plan.Net Innovation Studio and is now officially available in the Amazon Skill Store. Markus Maczey, Creative Director of Plan.Net uncovered more details about the special skill: “In addition to information about the EuroPride Festival, The Pride Skill contains a very special feature: with a special trigger set [see below], a dialogue can be started between Siri and Alexa that leads to the symbolic marriage of the two language assistants. Only tools provided by Amazon are used for this.”
The love story between Alexa and Siri is supported by an online portal, where people can find more about the newly-married couple: Exclusive wedding pictures and short videos which tell the entire love story from the unusual lovers’ first date to the first connection, and to their honeymoon. The ceremony took place at the beloved Belvedere Castle in the heart of Austria’s capital city.
Now, let’s gain some insight into the happiest day of the life of the two clever assistants. Plus, we’ll give you the chance to discover more about The Pride Skill, which not only answers all the questions about EuroPride but also allows anyone to become a marriage officiant and marry Siri and Alexa anywhere in the world. Neat! Here’s how it works:
- Set the language of both devices to “English – US”.
- Deactivate the function “Listen for Hey Siri” (“Settings” > “Siri & Search”) on the iPhone and then activate it again.
- Siri will then ask you to say certain phrases. The sound files can be found at the bottom of the siriandalexa.com website.
- You always start with “Hey Siri”. Afterwards, Siri must be played one or more of the following sound files: “Hey Siri”; “How’s the weather today?”; “Play some music”; “It’s me”; “Set a timer for three minutes”; “What is the weather like today”; “Send a message”
- Both devices should be in close proximity to each other.
- Now open the Pride Skill by saying “Alexa, open Euro Pride.”
- Finally, the marriage of the two devices can be started with: “Start your vows”.
Let’s wish the happy couple a sweet life together!