People with podcasts can't stop talking about AI, Spotify's CEO says, citing a 500% rise in episodes about it in the past month

• Spotify's CEO said the number of daily podcast episodes about AI have soared 500% in the last 30 days.
• His comments came just days after the platform removed thousands of AI-generated songs for "artificial streaming."

As the hype around AI continues to soar, Spotify podcasters are getting in on the action.

The number of daily podcast episodes about AI has gone up by almost 500% on Spotify in the last 30 days, CEO Daniel Ek tweeted Thursday.

"Talk about AI is everywhere right now," he said. "I looked at how it's trending on Spotify – and the growth is pretty insane."

The Swedish billionaire added that the same number had risen nearly 400% since the start of 2023.

As one example of the latest boom, all six of computer scientist Lex Fridman's podcast episodes in the last 30 days discuss AI, their descriptions show.

Fridman has coauthored studies on AI while working at MIT, but alongside his controversial discussions on vaccine safety and gender roles as Insider's Julia Black reported, AI now seems to be taking higher priority.

In reply to one user's question, Ek said he thinks "there will be tons of tools that will use AI to assist in creation and that it therefore will be a big thing on the platform."

Ek's tweet came two days after the Financial Times' report that Spotify took down tens of thousands of AI-generated songs from the company Boomy.

But that was only because of "artificial streaming" – bots being used to inflate audience numbers – and 93% of the tracks uploaded by the AI music startup are still online.

In February, Spotify debuted its new DJ feature — an AI-powered recommendation tool which partially uses tech from the creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI.

Spotify did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.