Despite the hoopla around IBM’s Watson AI engine, and it’s potential to disrupt areas such as healthcare and medical research, thus far the system has been deployed in rather more mundane ways.

There have been a number of applications in retail, with the likes of North Face using Watson to provide a more responsive interface to customers.  In a similar vein is a recent project undertaken by IBM subsidiary The Weather Company to use Watson to provide smarter, more responsive advertising.

As ‘fluffy’ as these applications of Watson seem, they perhaps pale in comparison to Meeka, a Brazilian app that is using AI to help people with planning their wedding.

AI Wedding Planner

The service has been developed by the wedding planning company Mecasei, and aims to help the bride and groom with all aspects of planning their big day, whether that’s the invitations to managing their budget.

The app, which is available on both Android and Apple platforms, allows users to interface with it using natural language, with the system then hoping to provide an accurate answer to each query.

They do eventually hope to expand the number of platforms that can run Meeka however to include messenger bot platforms on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

Meeka will be able to provide the couple with a regular run-down on their wedding, such as which guests have RSVP’d or even if they are running behind schedule.

Whilst at the moment Meeka is a text based interface, the plan is to build in Watson’s ability to recognize images.  There are also plans to roll it out into a much wider range of countries, although it is already capable of conversing in English, Spanish and French as well as Portuguese.

I’m still not convinced that wedding planning is really what IBM had in mind when they developed Watson, but hopefully these initial forays will support the development of more meaningful applications.

Check out the video below that sees the company speak about Meeka at the Samsung Developer Conference.