You can now share Spotify songs directly through Facebook Messenger

By Lulu Chang March 5, 2016

facebook messenger lite apple ios macbook iphone 4 5 6 app — Panithan Fakseemuang/123rf

The list of things you can’t do with Facebook Messenger appears to be growing shorter by the day. It’s not enough to just talk to your friends anymore via the app — now, you have to also be able to control the rest of your life through Messenger as well. And the latest service to jump on board is Spotify, whose new integration with the social media platform will allow users to share songs or playlists directly within Messenger. Simply go to the “more” tab in the Facebook app, and send your favorite tunes to your favorite people.

Those on the receiving end of the music will be able to click directly on the link, whereupon they’ll be taken to the Spotify app for instant playback (assuming that they have the app installed, that is). The latest feature is supported by both iOS and Android, so no matter which side of the smartphone fence you’re on, this announcement is for you.

The Spotify partnership is the latest in a series of features Facebook has rolled out for its insanely popular messaging system — earlier, it announced a partnership with Uber that would allow you to order a car from within the Messenger app (because apparently, it would be just too difficult to close out of one app and open another).

Messenger has also added a number of more messaging-specific bells and whistles, like the ability to share GIFs and stickers with your friends. Already, Facebook’s standalone app has garnered more than 800 million monthly active users, putting it on target to compete with some of the biggest players in the space. And with rumors of a desktop app, there’s no telling what’s next for Facebook Messenger.

So for now, Messenger is tapping into Spotify’s 75-million-strong user base to further boost engagement, but the sky seems to be the limit for this particular offshoot of the Zuckerberg empire.

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A ChatGPT-powered video call in action
https://twitter.com/frantzfries/status/1651316031762071553?s=20
Another limitation is that you need at least the iPhone 12 or a later model to start a video call with Annie because the real-time conversion of linguistic prompts into visual cues draws power from Apple’s Neural Engine.
The app’s makers claim that talking to Annie “face-to-face in real time time feels more natural and faster than typing and reading text.” So far, the sample videos we have seen on social media, like the one above, show a fairly convincing video call interface.
Right now, Annie appears to be pretty good at holding a fluent conversation, even though the voice sounds robotic, and the phrase pausing could also use some work. The answers, however, are typical of the answers you would get while texting back-and-forth with ChatGPT. And given enough time and improved voice training, Call Annie interactions can become a lot more natural-sounding.
It all brings back memories of the sci-fi flick Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with one such AI. One user asked on Reddit whether Annie can have a “memory” system that will turn it into a smarter “friend,” to which the app developers replied with “soon.”
https://twitter.com/jakedahn/status/1651285054591750144
This is only the beginning for Annie
Users who have tried the app note that it occasionally flubs the pronunciation of words, but once corrected, it also learns right away. One user described this experience as “scary stuff.”Another issue it has is with pronouncing words in languages other than English, something that the developers are trying to fix.
Thanks to its ChatGPT smarts, the app’s developers say it can help you with everything from learning and web searches to serving as a tour guide or even a virtual companion. We don’t know if it’s as smart as other virtual partner apps like Replika, but considering the fact that Annie is based on ChatGPT (and its vast data training model), you can have a significantly deeper and fact-driven conversation with Annie.
Animato’s App Store description notes that the AI keeps all conversations “confidential” but hasn’t specified what kind of security measures have been put in place and whether it uses the user conversations for training and refining Annie’s systems.