Guinness World Records Adds Alexa Skill Full of Astounding Feats
🗣 “Alexa, what’s the record of the day?”
— Guinness World Records 2021 Out Now (@GWR) January 20, 2021
Guinness World Records has launched an Alexa skill, adding its store of unusual and impressive feats to the voice assistant’s database. The new skill pulls from the deep, if idiosyncratic, well of records recorded by Guinness, adding a new dimension of facts that Alexa can share with users.
Audio Guinness
Asking questions and learning trivia are some of the most popular ways people use voice assistants, so a Guinness World Records Alexa skill makes plenty of sense. Several voice apps for both Alexa and Google Assitant claim to hold lots of fascinating records, but this is the first official offering from the original solution to every bar fight. Guinness hasn’t made their record book another of Alexa’s databases entirely. Instead, users can ask the voice assistant for the record of the day to hear an example feat. The voice assistant will follow-up by asking if the user wants to hear another, providing plenty of random amazing stories from the natural and human world.
Guinness had some of those chronicled in its pages show off to celebrate the new skill, as seen in the video above. The video highlights include butcher Barry Crowe in Cavan, Ireland, who has made a record 78 sausages in just a minute. You can also see soccer freestyle expert John Farnworth reveal how he has broken several records, including ten ‘Maradona 7’ tricks in a little under 30 seconds, not to mention climbing Mount Everest while juggling the ball. The highlight reel rounds off with couple Chris and Lisa Pitman, who each hold the record for most boards broken with one hand for their respective genders.
“It’s really exciting to see the Guinness World Records skill come to life on Alexa,” Guinness World Records editor-in-chief Craig Glenday said in a statement. “There are hundreds of record-breaking facts waiting to be shared so we hope that households enjoy fuelling their knowledge and learning about these incredible achievements. You never know, it may even inspire a few people to have a go at earning their own place in the Guinness World Records book one day!”
Entertaining Answers
As voice assistants and smart speakers become more common and accepted, the kinds of brands that will feel that it’s worthwhile investing in setting up a voice app will widen as well. The Guinness World Records is a good example of just how wide a net that can be. Voice apps that combine entertainment with some kind of knowledge are an attractive idea, especially if the information is specialized like with Guinness. The same principle might apply in the Premier League’s decision to infuse Alexa with the rules of soccer. In that case, the extra information is tied to the games shown on Amazon Prime Video, but the principle is the same. It also benefits Amazon’s goals to make Alexa as comprehensive a source of knowledge as possible. And the Guinness World Records are at least authoritative. They won’t be prey to the potential gaps and inaccuracies found when crowdsourcing Alexa Answers in Britain or the U.S. Now, it’s probably just a matter of time before there’s an extra section of the record book for AI accomplishments.
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