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For anyone writing about digital culture, robots certainly scare me. No, I’m not as scary as Connor in Detroit Becomes Human, but I definitely don’t leave my Google Home Mini’s mic on. I’m talking to myself but she doesn’t want her to hear me. Therefore, the boom in artificial intelligence in recent years does not bode well for those who fear that the tech lords are imminent. But then again, as someone writing about digital culture, sometimes I have to face my fears. Enter Spotify AI DJ.
Spotify’s latest personalization endeavor rides on the wave of AI technologies that have emerged and become ubiquitous in recent years. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses and businesses have started accelerating their adoption of AI technology. The survey predicts that this momentum will continue into the 2020s. In the consumer space, many of the technologies we already use, such as Google and Netflix, use AI to recommend search results. Consider, for example, the viral conversation Kevin Roose published in The New York Times with his AI chatbot on Bing, or the proliferation of his ChatGPT, an AI chatbot.
That said, Spotify’s AI DJ isn’t as evil as the Bing chatbot trying to get Roose to divorce his wife. I’m not very good at listening to music recommendations, so I’ll just call it ominous, but it’s not ominous. Still, I decided to face my fears and try out his personal Spotify DJ to add to my author page. In doing so, I wanted to analyze how useful, accurate, and necessary they felt it was, and whether it indicated that the presence of AI had changed the way we consume and share art online. is.
When I opened Spotify DJ, I was shocked by the voice. I expected something like Siri or TikTok’s text-to-speech voice, but instead modeled it after Xavier Jernigan, Spotify’s head of cultural partnerships and host of the podcast “The Get Up.” I was met with a nervous human voice. The DJ function initially displays a green circle. This circle verbalizes what you’re about to hear, then plays a few songs whether you listen or skip. After this handful, the DJ reappears, usually summarizing what he just heard and introducing the next category. Music plays and the cycle continues.
The DJ started by recommending lo-fi and hip-hop music I was already familiar with from artists such as Blue Wednesday and Njabes. It was a good start, especially considering I was testing this in the evening, so I felt like a DJ was softening me with his usual relaxing music at the time of the day.
Then the DJ hit me with All Time Low and the gentle intro time was over. Moving from lo-fi to rock, I haven’t listened to All Time Low, but Fall Out Boy, Paramore, and Maneskin. This was followed by an endorsement of punk, which felt a little lackluster in terms of diversifying the DJ’s offerings. The shift didn’t really demonstrate a DJ’s ability to endorse more diverse genres, and Spotify seemed to draw from my previous musical tastes rather than my current listening habits.
The DJ then said in an eerie human voice, “Pop is kinda yours,” before reversing course and starting playing Pop banging on Caity Baser and the British Parliament. The songs were fun overall, good recommendations, and fit my current tastes. At this point, though, I don’t think this could have been achieved by just playing her Spotify Song Radio of your favorite tracks. I think it’s different because of the novelty and individuality of DJs.
After these initial procedures, the DJ’s ranged from my 2022 favorites (which felt weird since it’s already April) to Fall Out Boy, Friend’s Picks, and “Thoughtful Songs” (was just Hozier). Until now, I have repeated the recommendations endlessly. and Lincoln’s “St. Bernard”), Editor’s Choice, Modern Rock. Never before have I realized that DJing has limitless possibilities. Ultimately I thought they would stop recommending and tell me to get out, but the more I scrolled, the more information they gave me. It has become commonplace.
At the end of the trial, the question came down to whether Spotify’s AI DJ feature was accurate or useful. This is a difficult question with a multifaceted and largely subjective answer. For me it was about 50/50 in terms of accuracy and predicting what I would like to hear. Yes, I like modern rock, lo-fi, and listen to what my friends are listening to. I also felt that it was drawing too much from previous listening libraries, but this could also be due to the AI trying to figure out what it actually wants to hear compared to what it wanted to hear before.
That said, even though I was chronically bad at listening to music suggestions, I thought the DJ made some fun new recommendations and pushed the boundaries of what I listened to. . And since I started this article, he’s used DJ on road trips when I’m undecided about what to listen to in the car. In this situation, its usefulness was less than the AI picking the music, as in traditional radio, but as a general shuffle of genres and music to make the ride interesting and unobjectionable. I thought it was really bright.
Will AI change the way we consume art? Well, I dare say it already has. Spotify AI DJ came right after the boom in AI art, so he’s not the first of its kind, but one of the first to make AI a marketing strategy. For this reason, I believe AI will change the way we share and consume art online as art becomes more commercialized, but I wouldn’t say it makes other, more human-centric forms of sharing obsolete. is not. There are always people like me who want to use Spotify’s radio feature, “Made For You” playlists, or collaborative tools like Spotify Blend. But as AI gets better at anticipating our wants and needs, it will also get better at choosing and serving the art we think we like best.
While this alone cannot justify the use of AI in everyday art, it is debatable how it enriches our digital lives. My fear of robots does not prevent me from declaring a strong passion for AI, but it does prevent me from recognizing its ability, if not its usefulness, to expand the amount and variety of art we consume. It’s not a hindrance. I might be bad at accepting music recommendations, but I can listen to Spotify’s DJs for a few hours to expand my repertoire and understand the internet a little better. For the love of God, please stop playing Fall Out Boy.
Maddie Agne, Daily Arts writer, maagne@umich.edu.
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