Napster, the company that forever changed how people share music 25 years ago, has decided to dip its toes into the world of AI. On Monday, the company announced Napster 26, a platform for thousands of different large language model AI chatbots, and Napster View, a clip-on holographic screen that displays your AI assistant right before your eyes.
Napster View is a glasses-free display — you plug it into the USB-C port and then mount it atop your laptop. The display shows off a fully 3D simulacrum of a human being, representing your AI assistant. It maintains eye contact and responds to your queries through the Napster 26 app.
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Each Napster AI assistant has a name, face and specialty. Examples include Amit, a fashionable zoomer who provides on-call tech support to fix computers, printers and the like, and JC, a «code wizard» who can find bugs and help you ship a coding project.
Napster suggests using the AI assistants for coding, writing and other creative work, but the more than 15,000 assistants included within Napster 26 span a much wider range of topics. Jordan, a workout coach, suggests foods and workouts; Kevin, a financial guide, helps with taxes and contracts.
This is essentially a humanistic approach to existing technology instead of a technological breakthrough. While the Napster View hardware is putting faces to your AI assistants, the Napster 26 platform is essentially built from thousands of large language models, which are systems trained on specific datasets (and your responses) to home in on and better perform specific tasks.
While no LLM is entirely foolproof and all of them can create false or misleading information, Napster’s platform of thousands of LLMs could help you find one that is particularly suited to the task at hand.
Napster 26 is currently available for Mac, with iOS, Android and PC versions expected by 2026.
What happened to Napster music?
You may recognize Napster from ye olde music pirating days, but the company spearheading this AI initiative is similar in name only. The original Napster website was shut down in 2001, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2002.
Over the past two decades, the brand has passed through multiple different hands. When Rhapsody acquired Napster in 2016, it renamed itself and restored the original digital music sharing site. Most recently, Napster was acquired by the metaverse-hopeful start-up Infinite Reality. This company is presently known as Napster Corporation.
If you’re interested in Napster AI, it’s not cheap. The Napster View clip-on hardware is $99 on the company’s website, but it includes one free month of Napster 26 access. Additional access to Napster 26 can be purchased as part of monthly or annual subscription packages.
A representative for Napster Corporation did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
