Spotify’s AI DJ Will Pick Your Music and Then Tell You Why

Spotify is testing an AI-driven personal DJ for Spotify Premium users in select regions—all you have to do is turn it on.

Whether you use Spotify for its social aspects or prefer to keep your music to yourself, the music streaming service has a slightly more personal feature for you to check out. Spotify's new AI DJ generates a personalized playlist for you that pulls from your established interests, complete with commentary to go along with each track it presents.

According to Spotify, DJ is powered by "generative AI through the use of OpenAI technology" to choose your songs. It also uses the voice of Spotify's Head of Cultural Partnerships, Xavier "X" Jernigan, as the model for its AI DJ voice model. This digital approximation of X will talk you through the various songs that pop up, which are themselves all selected using Spotify's recommendation tools. You'll receive a stream of tracks picked based on what you like, what you've listened to, and what you may be interested in, with the assortment adjusting over time with your feedback.

You can find the new AI DJ in your Music Feed via the Spotify mobile app—just select the DJ card to get started, and the rest will take care of itself. If you're using the feature and encounter something you don't want to listen to, tap the DJ button in the bottom right to have the DJ skip to something else.

A beta for DJ is rolling out today for Spotify Premium subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, with English as the only currently-available language. Post-beta details haven't been shared yet, but Spotify did say that X's voice would be "the first model for the DJ," implying there may eventually be more DJ voices to choose from.