Alex Blair, for News.com.au:

Spotify’s billionaire CEO Daniel Ek is under heavy fire from artists and industry advocates after announcing a €600 million (A$1.07 bn AUD) investment into Helsing, a military tech start-up developing AI tech for war.

Helsing, now valued at around €12 billion (A$19.5bn), builds AI-driven drones, submarines and aircraft and claims to “develop and deploy these technologies” to “protect fragile democracies”.

Ek’s investment, made via his firm Prima Materia, saw him aggressively double down on an earlier €100 million (A$162 million) pledge in 2021.

He now chairs the company.

Via Dave Rahardja, who notes on Mastodon:

• Spotify spent $250M of your subscription dollars to invite Joe Rogan to spew his disinformation on their platform.

• They’re still trying to embrace and extinguish Podcasts.

• They’re developing in-house, AI-generated “music” so users will play them (royalty-free) instead of music created by humans (who demand royalty).

And now, he’s using his wealth, created by your subscriptions, to fund tech that will use AI to literally murder humans in war.

Stop funding him. Quit Spotify now.

I’ve never been a Spotify user—between signing Joe Rogan, their fake-artist, better than payola schemes, and their anti-Apple crusade, any shot at that went out the door long ago. This alone would be a solid reason to never support them, though.

If you’re looking to leave Spotify, there are alternatives.

The responses to Rahardja’s post, though are absolutely wild, with one person—seemingly unironically—saying:

It’s actually one of the reasons why I subscribed to Spotify premium again. That “ai war” thing is a great defence tool and is what might save me and my family from a Russian invasion.

And other implying that the only two options are developing AI war machines or “have humans be sent to fight on the frontlines instead.”

As I said: absolutely wild.