YouTube Music is Testing AI Hosts That Will Interrupt Your Tunes (arstechnica.com) 56
YouTube's new "Labs" program plans to "offer a glimpse of the AI features it's developing for YouTube Music," reports Ars Technica.
But Ars Technica adds that this future "starts with AI 'hosts' that will chime in while you're listening to music. Yes, really." (YouTube says the AI aims to "deepen your listening experience"...) The "Beyond the Beat" host will break in every so often with relevant stories, trivia, and commentary about your musical tastes. YouTube says this feature will appear when you are listening to mixes and radio stations. The experimental feature is intended to be a bit like having a radio host drop some playful banter while cueing up the next song. It sounds a bit like Spotify's AI DJ, but the YouTube AI doesn't create playlists like Spotify's robot...
After joining, the YouTube Music app will get a new button on the Now Playing screen with the familiar Gemini sparkle logo. Tapping that will allow you to snooze the commentary for an hour or the remainder of the day. There is no option to completely disable the AI host in the app, so you'll have to opt out of the test if you decide Beyond the Beat is more trouble than it's worth.
YouTube calls it "a way for users to take our cutting edge AI experiments for a test drive," promises that "a limited number of US-based participants can test early prototypes and experiments and influence the future of YouTube. Sign up at YouTube.com/New."
Ars Technica believes "This is still generative AI, which comes with the risk of hallucinations and low-quality slop, neither of which belongs in your music. That said, Google's Audio Overviews are often surprisingly good in small doses."
But Ars Technica adds that this future "starts with AI 'hosts' that will chime in while you're listening to music. Yes, really." (YouTube says the AI aims to "deepen your listening experience"...) The "Beyond the Beat" host will break in every so often with relevant stories, trivia, and commentary about your musical tastes. YouTube says this feature will appear when you are listening to mixes and radio stations. The experimental feature is intended to be a bit like having a radio host drop some playful banter while cueing up the next song. It sounds a bit like Spotify's AI DJ, but the YouTube AI doesn't create playlists like Spotify's robot...
After joining, the YouTube Music app will get a new button on the Now Playing screen with the familiar Gemini sparkle logo. Tapping that will allow you to snooze the commentary for an hour or the remainder of the day. There is no option to completely disable the AI host in the app, so you'll have to opt out of the test if you decide Beyond the Beat is more trouble than it's worth.
YouTube calls it "a way for users to take our cutting edge AI experiments for a test drive," promises that "a limited number of US-based participants can test early prototypes and experiments and influence the future of YouTube. Sign up at YouTube.com/New."
Ars Technica believes "This is still generative AI, which comes with the risk of hallucinations and low-quality slop, neither of which belongs in your music. That said, Google's Audio Overviews are often surprisingly good in small doses."
As was foreseen (Score:3)
How about no (Score:5, Informative)
Didn't take long for me to get an FM radio, who's DJs respected the music and let it play without excessive yammering.
If Google thinks I'm going back to DJs yammering over my music they've got another think coming.
DJ babble wasn't just about egos (Score:5, Informative)
Talking over the start and end of a track prevented the 20th century version of ripping a track by recording the full uninterrupted version of the radio then maybe giving away/selling copies and not buying the record in a shop. Obviously a lot of us would record it anyway and didn't give a stuff about a bit of noise on the start and end but many people did.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
In the 90s we had one Dj on a local radio station that allowed some songs to play full and he even told when the song starts and how long it is
Re: DJ babble wasn't just about egos (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
I find the idea that your first exposure to music outside of church happened in 1970 really shocking.
I was born in 1956 and since I was so young I don't remember there was music everywhere, TV, radio, school, theatre, live performances.
What kind of cult were you living in that cut itself off from the world like that?
Re:How about no (Score:4, Interesting)
What kind of cult were you living in that cut itself off from the world like that?
Southern Baptist. I'd heard some music on TV and such, but there wasn't a radio in the house and my parental units always had religious music in the car. I was 13 when I built that Heathkit radio and discovered music.
Re: (Score:2)
I find the idea that your first exposure to music outside of church happened in 1970 really shocking. I was born in 1956 and since I was so young I don't remember there was music everywhere, TV, radio, school, theatre, live performances. What kind of cult were you living in that cut itself off from the world like that?
I hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it, but you're absolutely right. I was born in '58 and I remember bopping four-year-old style to "The Duke of Earl". When the TV wasn't turned on, the radio often was. It would have been difficult NOT to hear music.
Then again, maybe kids living in very small towns and having religious parents wouldn't be exposed to radio and TV, nor to record shops.
please can we not (Score:3)
Is there nothing better to do? I don't want any of this. I don't want my listening experience to be "deepened". If this is what alphabet are going to do with top tech talent, I'd rather they just lay everyone off and spend the money they save on additional yachts for everyone at the top.
Re: (Score:2)
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What they're going to deepen - what they intend to deepen, in the wound from stabbing their product in the back. (Not customers, the customers are their advertisers, and you can bet they'll carefully track how long people put up with this shit based on the nature of the content, and sell that information to advertisers.)
Google is an advertising company, and everything they do is to extract more money from their advertisers.
Re: (Score:2)
The bigger the company, the less reason they have to care. Once they dominate a market, they know you have nowhere else to go. That is when the garbage ratio spikes: Microsoft slipping ads into the operating syste
Re: (Score:2)
This illustrates the contempt large tech companies have for the people who keep them alive.
You have misunderstood their business. The "people who keep them alive" are not the end users listening to music on YouTube. The people who keep them alive are advertisers, and only advertisers. You, the end user, are the product.
They have calculated, probably with some accuracy, that the number of eyeballs to sell that they lose from this shit is of less value than the increased advertising revenue they get from the data collected, which will now include very precisely how many people put up with the AI sl
And meanwhile... (Score:4, Interesting)
...Deep Mind is developing AI to do really useful things in science
The AI world is splitting into two factions, those who make truly useful tools and others who make incredibly stupid and annoying crap
Re: (Score:2)
This is making music listwning better... (Score:3)
...just like nailing a turd to a Rolls Royce is increasing your status among the rich.
Bye YouTube (Score:3)
Not because of AI, but because of interruptions. If I want someone to talk over my music, I can use a radio.
Re: (Score:2)
DITTO!
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. My attention is VALUABLE. Try to take it without consent and I will remove the possibility for you to do so.
Bye Slashdot (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I would argue the news was once interesting because tech companies were doing interesting things. Now everyone's just clocking in until they can vest, after which they'll go start their new venture, because they've always been an /entrepreneur/, not a worker. Things were different 30 years ago.
YouTube Music, our business is music! (Score:2)
Ah, progress (Score:2)
It's the advertising. We've been down this road. We know where it ends. You know it, I know it.
Re: (Score:2)
You know it. The other thing is this uncanny valley of AI pronunciation. LLMs still don't get some difficult words right. I don't mean tomato tomahto type stuff, but head spinningly off. I was listening to this George Carlin on YouTube that I didn't realize was fake, until some jarring mispronunciations of words that George would never get wrong. Carlin was a stickler for language and he sure didn't grossly mispronounce common words. Wasn't nearly as funny as the original, and the whole thing was just grote
I don't even like human DJ chatter (Score:2)
Are they crazy, or just stupid? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed. It does work if all you care about is short-term profits, see Microsoft, for example. I guess these idiots cannot even understand that they are slaughtering the goose that lays golden eggs.
Re: (Score:2)
Joke's on you, their customers are actually the advertisers.
Well, another thing I will not use then (Score:5, Insightful)
I really do not understand how they do not see that enshittification like this will do nothing except ruin their name and make the situation better for the competition. Oh, sure, short-term this may (or may not) increase profits. Probably all these defectives understand.
The perfect feature for the perfect audience (Score:2)
\o/ (Score:1)
Pretty sure you're supposed to drink the Ko0l aid, not snort it :P
Simpsons did it (Score:1)
If I wanted interruption of my music all the time (Score:4, Interesting)
... I would listen to the radio.
The Spotify "DJ" is incredibly irritating and after trying it once I will not be using it again.
Only people who think that everyone wants to be given information and content chosen by someone else, not themselves, could think this is any product that anyone wants. This is a product of arrogant people who spend too much time in their AI echo chamber and not enough dealing with actual people.
Manage your own godamn music files locally (Score:2)
First they made it easy for you to listen to your music. Everybody but a few of us embraced this.
Next they're going to enshittify that experience.
The only way to protect yourself from that is to have complete control over your music files.
I wrote a python app to manage all of my music files. Nowadays one with some programming skills could write a personal app using an AI IDE such as Cursor to do the same thing, I'm writing personal apps using Cursor to replace a lot of scripts I've been using over the years
AI... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They might just be trying to kill their free service. After this, if you continue stubbornly listening, enduring the AI crap, they'll find other ways to further enshittify the service, until they finally close it due to "users have moved on".
Today I found out (Score:4, Funny)
Ringo Starr was such a skilled drummer in part because he had three arms and a prehensile tail!
Why? (Score:2)
Oh yeah, a winning strategy fer sure (Score:2)
"YouTube Music is Testing AI Hosts That Will Interrupt Your Tunes"
Lol, in other words, "how to make people hate and avoid your service without even trying it. "
Deep? (Score:2)
They mean deepen as in "deep six" kind of deep.
Well, my tixati is current and the piratebay still active. Your move, creep.
Listen to a musician instead (Score:2)
I'd far rather listen to tales from Randy Bachman about the background behind artists and tunes than intrusive AI slop. Or Rick Beato. When will people stop to ask themselves, "but should we?"
"listening experience" (Score:2)
YouTube says the AI aims to "deepen your listening experience".
Right.
Yes, I guess it will. By hopefully making people switch away from YT music en mass.
Downloading (Score:4, Informative)
Find the song you like and, instead of streaming it multiple times, you download it and never see adverts or pauses asking if you're still watching.
Really, it is that simple.
Re: (Score:1)
Ads? No thanks. I never see any ads because of ublock, revanced, etc.
Call me old fashioned, but I cannot stand:
- ads
- buffering/lag/no connectivity
- subscriptions
- AI slop
If idiots from gen XYZABCDEFwhatever don't know how to download content for offline use, shame on them. I'd rather NOT listen or watch anything with ads (or this DJ crap from google). If I cannot have something offline, it is not worth my time. The idiots can
DJ 3000 (Score:2)
Simpsons did it
https://vimeo.com/18516240 [vimeo.com]
Could be useful (Score:5, Interesting)
I find "DJ Chatter" to be very welcome for certain types of music, like classical music. Having a DJ provide a little background information about the piece and who performed it can be invaluable and add a whole new dimension to the song. That's missing when you just listen to an algorithmically-curated stream. Not so much for pop music, though, where I'm sure DJ chatter will assume the form of a random factoid about a manufactured pop song, which might as well be hallucinated given how little it matters.
Not having it (Score:1)
Stay tuned (Score:1)
No and Thanks! (Score:2)
What an abomination this has the potential to be. The Spotify DJ is crap (I never use it) and I doubt much will come from this waste of time. I certainly won't be paying for it!
"There is no option to completely disable the AI" (Score:2)
Yes there is, use a competitor.
Piracy is a competitor.
Not Clear If It Steps on Songs (Score:2)
YouTube says this feature will appear when you are listening to mixes and radio stations.
It may just yammer at you annoyingly with AI misspeaks between songs and not during them.
Some here are claiming that "you are not the customer, you are the product". This applies only to people who are listening to YouTube for free, and are already getting hit with commercials. It you pay for YouTube Music (if they are still calling it that, it is hard to keep up) then you really are the customer, not the product.
If this annoying "feature" gets turned on (and cannot be permanently turned off) then my YouTub