Spotify's new AI

Happy Eclipse Day if you’re in the U.S. Wondering where you can see totality from? Check out this app made in partnership with the Planetary Society, and remember: don’t look directly at it. 

Here are the headlines: 

🏢 Microsoft is opening a new AI hub based in London. 

🕹️ Apple is now allowing retro game emulators on its app store. 

📈 Is crypto back? Maybe, according to the latest VC data.

“Hey Spotify, make me a playlist inspired by Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter” - was the prompt I typed this morning while testing Spotify’s newest AI launch. 

Since AI burst onto the tech scene, Spotify has been one of the larger companies that has fully embraced it. The music streaming service has already seen success with its popular AI DJ feature and Daylists, and now the team has announced AI playlists. 

Like many AI integrations these days, it’s heavily based on prompts, but where it differs is in its complexity. In addition to some of the more basic requests like mine above, the playlist AI can also handle more creative requests like “beats to battle a zombie apocalypse” or “tunes to serenade my cat,” and Spotify insists that prompts can reference all sorts of things like animals, colors, activities but the best ones will include artists, genres, etc. 

Spotify is also using its data on user tastes to customize the playlists it generates, and users themselves can use AI to edit and refine the generated playlist by instructing it to be “less poppy” or “more upbeat.” 

How good is it? Moments after hitting enter, Spotify’s AI got to work crafting a pop-country-esque playlist for me that consisted of Beyonce’s latest album, complimented by the likes of Lil Nas X and even slightly more traditional sounds like Colby Acuff until I had a playlist fit for a morning of line-dancing. 

Ultimately, it’s another piece of the music discovery puzzle that Spotify is hoping to complete, which is especially welcome considering most people stop discovering new music in their 30s. 

In the meantime, I’ll be crafting a playlist to inspire me to finish my side projects. 

• MapStory lets you create an interactive map complete with your own narrative.
• Goaly gets kids excited about chores while educating them about finances. 
• Notes Tab transforms your new tab screen into a journal for note-taking.

There are no brownie points for guessing what the most shouted-out design tool product is. Spoiler: It’s Figma. Indie makers and massive companies worldwide use the collaborative design tool to go from idea to prototype quickly. 

Here are a handful of products that use Figma: 

💰 Gilion, a platform to forecast your startup's future. 

🏠 Rooms, a tool to make 3D games and interactive experiences.

🪁 Kitemaker, a collaboration platform for product teams.

• UI Bakery’s latest launch lets you generate a web app with a simple prompt.
• Muraena helps you find promising sales leads with the power of AI. 
• Yazero uses AI to help you validate your startup idea before committing.