Napster’s next act is an AI assistant made for the Mac

Macworld

Remember when Napster was the go-to network for finding songs shared by people you never met? Now. Napster wants to help you find everything else using–what else–a stable of AI assistants.

Back in June, the company announced Napster Companion, a platform that offers an array of AI-based agents that can offer advice on a vast array of topics. To interact with Napster Companion, the company offers Napster View, a 2.1-inch 3D holographic display that sits atop your MacBook, like a webcam.

Napster held a media presentation last Thursday to show Napster Companion at work. It has a large number of AI-based assistants ready to interact with you on a variety of topics: cooking, design, education, finance, fitness, health, software development, and more. When you need some guidance on a topic, an AI-based assistant–who has a human-like form and appears in the Napster View–appears and interacts with you in real time.

In a demonstration, Napster’s Edo Segal showed an example of how Companion can help someone. Segal used an AI assistant named Nyx to create a couple of songs while he had a conversation with the assistant. In another demo, Segal attempted to get tech support with Apple’s Test Flight software development tool. The AI assistant named Amit appeared, but the demo came to a halt when the assistant was not responding. The AI assistants had natural-sounding voices and speaking cadences; Edo said the responses were being generated in real time and were not prepared answers.




Napster View is a holographic display that shows your Napster Companion AI assistant.Napster

The Napster device can also generate an “AI twin” that can communicate with other users of the app when you’re unavailable. Segal called it “voicemail on steroids,” and said he uses his own digital twin weekly. 

Napster is making Companion and View available on the Mac first, with support for other platforms coming at a later time. The reason the Mac is first: Apple silicon. “The Mac is a uniform platform with a very strong GPU, which is necessary,” said Segal, who pointed out that the video of the Companion AI assistants is generated on-device. “We have a neural network that’s running on your Mac that’s creating that video, and that’s allowing us to deliver that to you.” A PC version is slated for next year.

Companion is $19 per month, or $219 annually. That includes the Napster View device, which can also be bought separately for $99. Usage-based options are also available, with 100 hours of Companion access for $95 without the Napster View. A 200-hour with a Napster View is $189.

Napster started as a peer-to-peer file sharing app in 1999, and was primarily used to freely distribute copyrighted files, such as music. A series of lawsuits caused Napster to shut down and eventually declare bankruptcy. After that, the Napster brand was sold several times over, with Infinite Reality buying it earlier this year for $207 million. Infinite Reality is now using the brand for its AI products.