Napster Reinvents Itself with AI: Launches Holographic Assistant Platform

Even Napster Has AI: This New Holographic Assistant Watches You While You Work

Expertise Community solar, state solar policy, solar cost and accessibility, renewable energy, electric vehicles, video games, home internet for gaming. 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. Don't miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source. 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. 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, and 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. 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 comment.

Napster is back -- and it just launched a $99 holographic AI display

Napster 26 reimagines how we work with AI... and it's a lot more than a chatbot Napster, best known for transforming digital music in the early 2000s, is making a comeback -- this time in the world of AI. Today the company announced Napster 26, a new platform designed for creative collaboration with AI, along with Napster View, a $99 holographic display that enables users to interact with 3D AI companions from their Mac desktops. Napster 26 is described as a complete AI platform for Mac users, allowing access to over 15,000 specialized AI companions. These AI agents span a range of roles such as coding instructors, wellness coaches, designers, business advisors and more. They're all designed to work alongside users in real time. Think of them as custom GPTs but with faces. Unlike traditional AI chatbots that rely on prompt-and-response interactions, Napster 26 introduces context-aware AI collaborators that understand what's on your screen and adapt to your workflow. According to Napster, these AI companions have memory similar to ChatGPT and Claude so it can remember prior conversations, learn your preferences and evolve over time to better support your projects. The platform can be accessed via web browser starting today, with mobile versions for iOS and Android on the way. PC support is expected in 2026. Interstingly enough, the Napster View component isn't too far from what I wrote about in my special report of the world in 2035. Napster View is a glasses-free display that projects 3D AI companions into a dedicated space above your Mac screen. No VR headset or special glasses are required. The idea is to keep AI interactions visually separate from your main workspace while enabling natural, face-to-face conversation. Napster View also supports live 3D video calls with AI avatars or other users' digital twins; AI-powered representations of real people that can attend meetings or collaborate when you're unavailable. The device includes push-to-talk privacy controls to ensure users remain in control of when the AI is listening or active. Alongside the hardware and platform, Napster is launching what it calls a new creative economy. Users can collaborate not only with AI but with other users and their digital twins. Finished projects can be published directly to the Napster platform, potentially contributing to a broader AI-driven creative community. According to Napster CEO John Acunto, this new approach removes traditional barriers to expertise such as geography and cost, and positions AI as a full-time creative partner. "This isn't an app," Acunto says in the press release. "It's the infrastructure for a new era of human creativity." Napster View is available starting today for $99, which includes one free month of Napster 26 access. Subscription plans will be offered after the first month. A Mac download is required to use the platform. Users can visit napster.ai/apps to place an order or download the app. With this launch, Napster 26 aims to redefine AI interaction by replacing traditional chatbot interfaces with embodied, real-time collaborators -- complete with holographic presence. Whether this new hardware-software bundle resonates with mainstream users remains to be seen, but it's a notable evolution from the company that once disrupted the music world. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

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

Napster thinks AI is the solution to your search for good help. 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. 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. Napster announced pricing in its June announcement. Companion is $19 per month, or $219 annually. That includes the Napster View device, which can also be bought separately for $199. 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.

Napster returns as an AI companion for your MacBook - seriously

Imagine a co-worker or companion, staring at you from just above your MacBook screen, always ready with a contextual answer, guidance, and even emotional support. You probably wouldn't be thinking, "Oh, right, that's Napster," but starting today, perhaps you should. It's been a little while since many of us have thought about the now 26-year-old firm that started as a music sharing service before being virtually litigated out of existence. The brand, though, lives on in a newly relevant form thanks to its acquisition by Infinite Reality a few years ago. Now the company (which rebranded itself as Napster) is unveiling Napster View, a hardware/software suite that brings agentic AI to your MacBook (running M1 or higher) desktop. The hardware, a holographic screen that attaches to the top of your screen (connecting via cable), serves to display a huge library of AI agents (some 15,000 of them), all with different looks, personalities, and, most importantly, skills (this includes designers, well-being guides, creative gurus, and even a chief of staff). The holographic image, which is powered by the MacBook's Apple Silicon (no Windows version is available for now), appears to look you in the eye and, with your permission, can see what's on your screen and help you. It can also use your system's camera to see, say, what you're wearing (or plan to wear), and then your smiling agent will offer hopefully useful fashion advice. The Napster View software (Napster 26 platform) can also be entirely desktop-based, but Napster reps told us there's a benefit to not taking up screen real estate just to house agentic AI. In a live demo, I watched as Napster agents assisted in Photoshop work and even business plan brief creation. On the latter, though, the agent didn't simply create the document. It insisted that now was not the right time because the brief would be made based on assumptions. We were told this is a feature, not a bug. Napster wants these agents to be helpful, and that can mean being more critical and offering real feedback. Behind these agents is a variety of models from partners like Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google's Gemini 2.5 model. The agents appear to switch up models based on the tasks. Napster also partnered with Eleven Labs, which might be responsible for the somewhat overly polished looks of your agentic team. Napster View goes further, though, and can guide you to create a digital twin who can appear on other users' Napster View hardware (or on the desktop). It can converse in your stead, gathering information that you can read as a summarization later in an email. Some of it appeared a bit creepy: that face watching you from just above the screen and instantly knowing what you're working on, for instance. Still, I could also see how helpful it might be, especially when you're stuck on how to make something work in Photoshop or if you can't quite analyze the data coming out of your analytics system. We used one of the agents, Nyx, an AI R&B singer and composer agent, to talk through concerns about AI and then let her create a pair of songs about it. I listened to Nyx "sing" a catchy tune that included the lyric, "AI takes jobs..." You can also, if you choose, use your digital twin to create a song, though I don't know why you'd do that. These agents appear capable of almost any task, but Napster told us that if there's a situation where an agent can't help you, they instantly create a new one to fill in that blank. In a somewhat weird footnote, these agents are designed as fully-realized personas who continue posting and creating content that appears in their own feeds. At one point, we saw Nyx in a selfie bikini photo. One other quirk I noticed is that the AI agent's speech didn't always appear in sync with the face animations. Napster View starts at $99, and there will be service fees for access to the AI agent team. In a way, I like how Naspter View ties the AI to your desktop and core intents. It's certainly smarter and less off-putting than an AI wearable. As for how much prosumers will want to engage with these agents, well, I guess that depends on just how helpful they really are.