Spotify’s New ‘AI DJ’ Mimics the Worst Parts of Listening to the Radio

Spotify has unveiled a new feature that lets you curate your music, powered by artificial intelligence. The company’s new AI DJaptly called “DJ“ helps guide you through your listening experience by bringing you music it thinks you’ll love, along with computer-generated commentary on what makes those songs great.

DJ serves as Spotify’s music curation tool that brings you songs you like and she sings thinks You’ll like it wrapped in a realistic voice modeled after Xavier “X”. Jernigan, Head of Cultural Partnerships at Spotify. DJ generates charming and cheeky jokes after every few songs generated by machine learning, and these comments describe your listening habits and fun facts about the album or song you’re listening to. DJ is Spotify’s latest foray into AI, but the music streaming service Artificial intelligence is no stranger – Spotify uses AI to bring you customized playlists like Daily Mixes, Decade Mixes and Mood Mixes.

“[The DJ] gives us the ability to harness the power of contextualization for himI tell artists’ stories and talk a little deeper about songs,” said JJ Italiano – Spotify’s head of global hits – during a press event at Spotify’s Brooklyn office yesterday. “It’s a tool that we haven’t had in the past that we’re really excited about.”

You can access DJ by navigating to the music feed on the Spotify mobile app home page. There you’ll be greeted by a wobbly green circle on a glowing blue background – that’s DJ. Tap DJ begins the AI’s process of sending you personalized music, complete with a short monologue about every five songs, just like you would hear on the radio. If the current song suite doesn’t match the mood, you can tap DJ‘s button at the bottom right of the screen to change the mood.

The AI ​​that drives DJ was not built from the ground up by Spotify, but was designed with the company in mind Acquisition of Sonatica London-based technology company that specializes in AI voices. Writers at Spotify generate scripts based on Jernigan’s own cadence, inflection, and slang, which are then fed into a voice model that Spotify trained using machine learning mimic Jernigan’s voice that generates DJ‘s comment.

“If we change a comma to a period or to an ellipse, that can actually change the diffraction of AI X,” Jernigan said at the event.

Spotify says that 81% of its users enjoy the platform’s personalization, such as Spotify packed, which generates a completely unique yearly summary of your most listened to songs. DJ is an attempt in this direction, taking the experience of using Spotify and tailoring it to a specific user. While some users could find the constant interruptions by DJ Annoyingly, Spotify says that this comment can actually appeal and persuade the user to try the new music DJ feed them.

But with all that said, DJ is a bit unnecessary. DJ is basically a humanization of Spotify’s already existing AI-generated playlists – which also recommend songs you might like and reconsider your past listening habits – except the tool now has a funny voice. while DJ is cute and fun to play with, it’s hard to believe the AI ​​isn’t just Spotify’s attempt to chase the wave of AI-forward products from tech companies like Microsoft’s ChatGPT-powered Bing And Shutterstock’s AI art generator.

DJ is in beta and available today for Spotify Premium users in the United States and Canada.