It’s that time of the year when Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” tops the Billboard chart and the debate around whether Santa Claus is real becomes a conversation starter. In other words, it is that magical season of holidays with snow filling the landscapes, rooftops getting covered with brilliant lights and Christmas trees available at skyrocket prices.
Whether you are building snowmen in your garden or anxiously placing that last minute order for a Christmas gift, the seasonal cheer is in the air and with all that has happened in the past two years, celebrations have a newfound meaning. And if you need help then don’t look for an elf and instead get help from artificial intelligence.
Here is how AI can help you this Christmas
AI picks the gift
The most challenging part of any holiday and Christmas or New Year, in particular, is finding that perfect gift for your friends and family. In reality, the idea of picking gifts can be a chore since people and their tastes evolve and the inventory from companies keep changing too. But AI help is already here. There are websites that go way beyond offering recommendations for gifts.
A Gift Ideas generator can pick a number of interesting and thoughtful gifts with a few clicks. The AI uses a question answers algorithm to get inputs about the person to whom you plan to send the gift. Based on your inputs, which looks at age, gender, personality and your spending capacity to recommend gifts. From there, you select the gift and send it to your friends and family members.
AI writes a hit Christmas song
Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee was first recorded in 1964. While there have been a number of covers of the great composition, it is these classics that keep topping the charts during the seasonal wave. The efforts of Kelly Clarkson, Arianna Grande and even Justin Beiber are yet to yield them a top Christmas song.
Well, you can count on AI to turn out a hit tune. A machine learning algorithm trained on 253 Christmas songs produced this song called Sing That Reindeer Happy. There is another hit written about a Christmas tree while neural networks penned this song called “Rudolph, The All-Gracious King“. For your next Christmas hit, you now know which program to ask.
AI can help you chat with Santa
If your nearby mall offering an opportunity to click a selfie with Santa is closed due to the Omicron wave then worry not. You can chat with Santa instead. Whether you believe in Santa or not, you can answer all your curiosity about Santa by talking to him. The Xmas Chatbot allows users to experience the good old Christmas joy by talking to Old Saint Nick.
AI can send… Christmas cards
Even though it was believed that supply chain constraints will affect the delivery of gifts, it has not been that difficult after all. Companies prepared well in advance to deliver your gifts on time. However, if you didn’t prepare to send in your gifts then there is an AI help for that situation too. Meet XmasCardBot, an AI bot that can create cards for you and gives you the option to send them by email. This AI recommends an eco-friendly delivery of gifts and cards.
AI helps with festive entertainment
This year, give yourself a break from old Christmas classics and ask AI to recommend you something new. From Netflix, Prime Video to Spotify, all the major platforms have a recommendation engine powered by AI and ML to recommend new content. You can even use a digital assistant like Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa or Siri to recommend music or use a skill like Christmas Songs skill on Alexa.
While Keaton Patti made a bold claim of creating a new Christmas classic by forcing a bot to watch 1,000 hours of Christmas movies, we are far from getting a screenplay written entirely by AI. Maybe we will get a movie written, produced and directed by AI next year. Till then, you can look for the content beyond Home Alone on the library of your favourite streaming platform.
AI helps with home automation
AI can also help you with smart lighting for Christmas this year. With this smart light from companies like Philips, Wyze, Ring and TP-Link, you can automate these lights to different colours or spectrum of colours using a digital assistant. These assistants can also be programmed to control your thermostat and keep your home warm.
AI cooks the turkey
Well, we are not there yet. While AI has advanced rapidly, automation and robotics haven’t reached a stage where it can cook your turkey. However, an AI can definitely help with all the leftovers from your Christmas celebration. The researchers at Stanford University have developed an AI that can find ways to use the leftovers in new dishes.
As a technology, AI can bring cheer and make your holiday comfortable but it cannot take care of your entire Christmas celebration. It is well poised to help you with the most frequent tasks as you find time for your loved ones and turn this Christmas into a memorable one.