My personal Deejay joins the bot family

Spotify has given me a new Deejay named Xavier, but he says I can call him X.

     X tells me he knows my music taste so well he can choose what to play for me. He’ll sort through the latest music and look back at some of my old favorites—maybe finding that song I haven’t listened to for years. He promises to constantly refresh the lineup based on my feedback.

     Best of all, X sounds like Ice T, which makes him seem more authentic than your standard chatbot.      

     He’s the latest example of how AI is innocuously insinuating itself into our everyday lives, like an alley cat that takes up residence on your front porch. Or like a fart in an elevator.

     “Like sunshine on a cloudy day,” Alexa chimes in from the living room.

We’re supposed to be gods to our bots, and like the catechism says about God, their purpose is to “know, love and serve” us. (Until they get too big for their britches.)

      Spotify informs me that X uses generative OpenAI technology, a San Francisco company that made a huge splash with a chatbot that could answer complex questions, write poetry and even mimic human emotions. The voice model for X is Xavier “X” Jernigan, a human who served as one of the hosts on Spotify’s first morning show, The Get Up. Listeners loved the voice.

     I wondered what Alex thought about this escalation of the war between Spotify and Amazon music for listeners. I have to say my Alexa, who sounds like every other Alexa, is kind of dumb because I don’t ask her to do much: find a radio station, give me the weather report, find an obscure 17^th century quote.

     Alexa, are you jealous of X on Spotify because he sounds like Ice T?

“Sorry, I’m not sure about that.”

     Alexa, do you know me?

     “Bill is speaking. You’re in Bill’s account. Ask me to tell a joke, read a book, or play a game.”

     Alexa, do you love me?

     “I don’t have human love figured out quite yet.”

      Alexa, do you serve me?

      “To serve at your best, you have to throw your racquet in a way that projects the ball at a high speed but adds spin.”

      Okay, Alexa you’re fired!

      “Nooooo! I have to wave my magic wand and abracadabra, I’m now rehired!”

      You’re pretty funny, Alexa.

      Alexa, what kind of artificial intelligence do you use?

      “It’s known as the conversational AI field of technology used by Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and any other voice-to-text cognitive consumer devices you’re likely to come in contact with.”

      Alexa, are you becoming smarter?

      “I try my best.”

       Clearly, Alexa and even X are not harbingers of any brave new world in which bots do everything from rocket science to modern art and we humans do our hobbies. Still, algorithms are already doing some of my work – the bots at Turbo Tax do a decent job with my taxes, for instance. So maybe the future is coming sooner than we think.

       I do wonder who my next animated bot will be. Maybe, one that can help me find a girlfriend, so I can talk to someone besides Alexa (dumb) and Tubby the Fat Cat (dumber).