Those who don’t pay for Spotify Premium have to listen to ads from time to time while playing their favorite songs. The voices that announce the advertising that sounds are still human, but Bill Simmons, founder of the podcast network The Ringer, owned by Spotify since 2020, says that this is about to change.
Voices trained for announcements
According to Simmons, the platform is developing artificial intelligence tools that will have the voices of famous performers. To do this, they must use audio from the artists themselves who are training the AI, so that it sounds less robotic and more like a real voice.
“I don’t think Spotify will be angry with me about this, but we are developing things,” Simons began by stating in an episode from The Bill Simmons Podcast-. Obviously, they have to give the approval of the voicebut it opens up, from an advertising point of view, great possibilities”.
Simmons believes that the use of AI in advertising allows advertising to be more personal. In fact, he exemplifies it with the case of a ticket sales company and the ability to target ads geographicallyto be heard only by listeners close to where the event will take place.
AI-powered podcasts
The potential for AI to get a podcast’s message across more languages was also mentioned. Simmons came up with a scenario in which an AI bot was trained on his past podcasts: “Would people rather interact with the bot or listen to my podcast?”
AI ads wouldn’t be the first thing Spotify has included with the technology. Users have already taken care of it: there has been a 500% increase in daily podcast episodes that talk about AI and some have used AI-generated content. It has also been used to create music with voices and styles of famous artists, such as Drake, The Weeknd and Travis Scottwhich ended up being removed from the platform.
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