Spotify now has an AI chatbot, too

Spotify is testing a new AI feature that allows Premium subscribers to play and review songs, audiobooks, and podcasts by talking to a chatbot. The “Talk to Spotify” is available on the Home and Now Playing screens on the Spotify mobile app You can interact with the chatbots by typing your request into the familiar AI box, or by selecting the microphone and speaking.

Amazon Music it launched the same last year when it integrated Alexa Plus into the service. Spotify’s chatbot goes a step beyond providing AI-driven recommendations and challenges, however, as it lists your playlists, favorite artists, repeat listens, and listens to your requests. This means you can ask questions about your listening history to see when you’ve heard a certain song, or see what genres you’ve been into recently if you can’t stand the best sounds of the year.

The updated version of AI is more controversial than the old one Recommended Playlistwhich automatically creates playlists based on the description. Now, you can ask the Spotify chatbot to “play songs I’ve never heard before,” and control what’s being played with other instructions such as requesting other artists or asking to “make it fun.” Spotify says the new deal aims to make the platform more “personal and useful for every listener,” creating this one several ways that the company is trying to the address complaints about his algorithm.

You can also ask Spotify AI all kinds of questions about what you’re listening to, making the interface feel like using chatbots like Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This includes asking when a song was released, looking for other topics an author has covered while listening to one of their audiobooks, or checking if a podcast guest has appeared on other shows.

This update is rolling out slowly in beta to Premium users in the US, Ireland, and Sweden who are 18 years of age or older. It is available on both iOS and Android devices in English, although Spotify says this is a work in progress, and warns that “the answers are not always perfect.”