Spotify is putting a conversational chatbot right inside its app

Spotify isn’t shying away from embracing AI in its app, and the company is now testing a new way for users to discover and control their audio using conversational AI. The streaming giant has officially announced a new “Talk to Spotify” conversational experience that lets listeners type or speak directly to the app to have a back-and-forth conversation about their music, podcasts, and audiobooks.

With the new conversational experience, Spotify has essentially put an AI chatbot in the app. Users can type or speak anything related to their audio experience in a practically omnipresent text/voice input box, and Spotify will react accordingly. You can ask Spotify to “Play some artists I haven’t heard before,” and then follow up with natural language commands like “save this song,” “follow this artist,” “play more of this,” or just about anything else to steer the rest of the conversation.

You can even go beyond music playback and ask general questions about the music or audio, like “when was this album released?” or “What other podcasts has this guest been on?” You can even ask questions about your own tastes, since Spotify understands your playlists, favorite artists, repeat listens, and listening history, so questions like “What genres have I been into recently?” might tell you a little bit more about yourself than you previously knew.

The new “Talk to Spotify” conversational Spotify experience is rolling out gradually in beta to English-language Spotify Premium users aged 18 and above in the US, Ireland, and Sweden. This experience is rolling out across iOS and Android. Spotify says that since this is a beta, responses won’t always be perfect, and user feedback will shape what comes next.