AI is being pushed into every possible bit of software you can think of at the moment, whether you like it or not! Spotify is doing its part with a new conversational assistant that aims to simplify the experience by letting you interact with Spotify directly through voice or text. It's basically just a fancy new version of voice assist with an AI name tagged onto it so shareholders feel they are getting their money's worth.

Takeaways:

  1. Spotify is introducing an AI chat assistant that lets users control playback and access information using voice commands or text messages.
  2. The assistant can answer questions about your listening history, favourite artists, and the content available on the platform.
  3. Where to enable the new voice control feature in Spotify?

How Does the New AI Assistant Work in Spotify?

Spotify's new AI assistant adds a conversational experience that lets anyone communicate directly with the app on mobile devices. So instead of manually searching through playlists or menus, like a primitive, you can now type or speak your request to find music, ask questions, or explore content available within the platform.

As always, the aim is to make Spotify feel faster and more natural. For example, you can ask the assistant to recommend artists you've never heard before, create playlists based on a specific genre, or suggest songs that match a particular mood. If the initial recommendations are not exactly what you're looking for, you can continue the conversation with additional instructions instead of starting over.

It's a decent feature to use if you're driving or something, but for the most part it's probably not going to be something the average person uses.

How to Control Spotify With Your Voice Using the New AI Assistant

At the moment, the feature is only available as a beta, and Spotify hasn't confirmed that the initial rollout is limited to Premium subscribers who are at least 18 years old in the United States, Ireland, and Sweden. It also currently only supports English and is available through the Spotify mobile apps for iOS and Android.

So if your account has access, consider yourself lucky, or unlucky depending on your feelings about AI, I guess. Using the assistant is pretty simple.

  • On the home screen or the Now Playing view, you'll see a new chat box where you can start a conversation.
  • From there, you can either type your request or tap the microphone button to speak your commands.

What You Can Do with the Assistant

Once you've asked a question, you'll get a response, then you can continue the conversation to refine the results without repeating your original request. You can also use the assistant to save songs, add tracks to your playback queue, or follow artists directly from the chat interface.

Because the feature is still in beta, some details are still pretty vague, and Spotify has not announced when it will expand to more countries, whether free users will receive access, or which languages will be supported next. The company also says that responses may not always be completely accurate during this early stage of development.

Just like ChatGPT and all the other AI tools screw things up, you can expect this to do the exact same thing, even though it realistically has a minuscule amount of stuff to reign over...