Spotify and ChatGPT team up for new recomendation function

Spotify and OpenAI's ChatGPT are joining forces. Starting today (October 6), Free and Premium Spotify users in 145 English language markets will be able to connect their profiles with their ChatGPT accounts for "personalized music and podcast recommendations," according to a press release.

The function is accessible by using the prompt "Spotify" in a dialogue with ChatGPT (for example: "What are some good podcasts about our technocratic hellscape on Spotify?"). Once the accounts are connected, ChatGPT will make suggestions based on the question. Users can also "extend a ChatGPT conversation with a soundtrack that fits the moment," which sounds an awful lot like "get your Large Language Model girlfriend to make you a mixtape in a fraction of a second."

Spotify vows that "artists’ and creators’ work stays protected stays protected" under the new functionality. "Spotify will not share music, podcasts, or any other audio or video content on our platform with OpenAI for training purposes." Earlier this year, OpenAI was one of the LLM companies accused of "the largest IP theft in human history" in a recent lawsuit filed by the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP), who claim the company was one of many that infringed on the copyrights of artists and musician to create their models.

In April 2020, OpenAI revealed that its music generator Jukebox was trained on 1.2 million songs (specific names were not revealed).

Last week, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek took on the role of Executive Chair with Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström replacing him as co-CEOs. Though not explicitly mentioned in the announcement, the change came as a groundswell of artists pulled their music from the platform in response to a $694 million investment into an AI military company made by Ek's investment firm.