At the risk of stating the obvious, AI is absolutely everywhere lately. There\u2019s AI in your car<\/a>, AI in your messaging app<\/a>, AI in your glasses<\/a>. I\u2019ve gotten pretty desensitized to it all as a hazard of the job, but it was Spotify\u2019s AI DJ that actually got my attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019ve listened to a top 40 radio station in the past two decades, so I\u2019m familiar with the concept of a robot picking music for me. In that context, an AI DJ doesn\u2019t seem like much of a stretch. But after using it on and off for a week, I\u2019m convinced it\u2019s the perfect analogy for our AI-everything moment. It\u2019s eerily human, and it plays a lot of music I like. But take it from someone with access to a high-quality local indie radio station \u2014 one that employs human DJs! \u2014 there just ain\u2019t nothing like the real thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Spotify\u2019s AI DJ has been around since early 2023<\/a>, but it piqued my interest recently when I was scrounging around the app looking for some work-friendly tunes. The AI voice greeted me by name, then after a little preamble, told me it had some \u201cdream pop and neo-psychedelic waves\u201d picked out. As the music started, I was annoyed at how extremely my shit it was. I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised, considering that Spotify has nearly a decade\u2019s worth of data on my musical listening habits. It drew on my previous listening for the next track, too: a song by Classixx, whose Hanging Gardens <\/em>album I listened to on repeat last year. But while I listened to Hanging Gardens<\/em> on Spotify, I didn\u2019t discover it there. I heard it first on KEXP<\/a> \u2014 a local station where real humans pick the music.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n See, here in Seattle, we\u2019re extremely spoiled. In between the robot-programmed, conglomerate-owned stations, we have a real honest-to-god independent station on our radio dials: 90.3, to be precise. I started listening to KEXP through their online stream years before I moved to Seattle. Being a local has only made me more of a fan; I celebrated the opening of the \u201cnew\u201d KEXP location in 2016 and saw one of my favorite bands play a free in-studio show<\/a> there not long before they broke up. I\u2019ve logged countless hours working on my laptop in the community gathering space. Being able to walk into my favorite radio station and just like, hang out, remains cool as hell all these years later. I wish every city in the country had a KEXP.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s not that I like everything that I hear on KEXP. \u201cThe Friday song\u201d<\/a> is banned in my house because my husband and I are both so sick of it. And as much as I\u2019ve tried, I can\u2019t get into Wet Leg<\/a>. It\u2019s a me problem. But that\u2019s kind of the point of a radio station, isn\u2019t it? You hear some stuff you like and some stuff you\u2019re not as into. Maybe you hear a song you forgot about but love or a band you dig that you\u2019ve never heard before. It\u2019s a well-rounded meal, while an AI-curated set feels like a dessert buffet. It\u2019s all the stuff you love, and it\u2019s great at first, but then it gives you a stomach ache after a while.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It hits different than when it comes from an algorithm<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the era of Spotify algorithms and top 40 stations, a DJ might seem like an abstract concept. But KEXP\u2019s DJs are very much real people that I see out in the community, emceeing local music festivals and shopping at the co-op grocery store. It\u2019s an obvious but crucial difference. When a real human plays a song you really like because they<\/em> really like it, too, it hits different than when it comes from an algorithm.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Being on air and sharing music is \u201ca way of connection with thousands of people across the world,\u201d says Evie Stokes, DJ and host of KEXP\u2019s Drive Time<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s a great way for me to be honest and have accountability and community that I think we so desperately need.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Her connection to the audience is built through and alongside the music; Stokes has shared her journey into sobriety with her listeners. \u201cEvery time I talk about it on air\u2026 I get an influx of messages from folks who are going through similar paths in their life.\u201d That connection simply can\u2019t exist when the only thing running the station is a robot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the downsides of being employed as a writer is that it\u2019s basically impossible for me to listen to the radio while I work. I can\u2019t write to songs with lyrics, and I definitely can\u2019t write while a DJ is talking. So I turn to Spotify a lot during the workday, and I\u2019ve listened to plenty of \u201clofi\u201d and \u201csmooth jazz beats\u201d playlists while blogging. I\u2019ve used another of Spotify\u2019s AI features, too: AI-created playlists. For the purpose, they\u2019re fine. Best of all, there\u2019s no pretense that a human is picking the music for me. I tell the computer what mood I\u2019m in, and it assembles a playlist of tunes that fit the assignment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If nothing else, the AI DJ is a kind of totem of the particular AI moment we\u2019re in. Generative AI is buzzy, and tech companies are busy shoving it into every corner of every product they make, whether it has any business being there or not. There\u2019s plenty of stuff AI can do and probably will do for us in the near future. But standing in for a real human, especially in creative applications, isn\u2019t one of them. Take it from the Polish radio station that tried \u2014 and failed spectacularly \u2014 to replace its human presenters with AI characters<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A podcast is just humans talking to each other<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Does anyone actually want an AI DJ calling them by name? Does anybody want an AI-generated DM from their favorite creator<\/a>? Does anyone want to have a Zoom meeting with your AI avatar<\/a>? Maybe, but I think the tech executives pushing for more of this stuff are vastly overestimating this demand and underestimating the value that a real human brings to an exchange. People want to listen to podcasts<\/a>, for Christ\u2019s sake. A podcast is just humans talking to each other. Conceptually, listening to a podcast is about as advanced as gathering round the radio for your favorite program like people did a hundred years ago. Some things are constants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On the day I started listening to the Spotify AI DJ, I got in the car that afternoon to pick my kid up from daycare. DJ Riz was hosting Drive Time <\/em>on KEXP, and the first thing I heard him play was \u201cSunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows\u201d by Lesley Gore, released in 1963. It\u2019s a bop that\u2019s as syrupy-sweet as the candy in its title. Riz followed that up with Love<\/em> from Mos Def\u2019s 1999 album Black on Both Sides<\/em>. I\u2019m sure I wouldn\u2019t have listened to either of those songs on my own that afternoon, let alone back to back. But it worked, and the juxtaposition made me smile. You just don\u2019t get that kind of thing from AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n