Solo

Solo is an emotional radio that heralds the future of a friendlier, more playful Artificial Intelligence. Through exploring the creative, interpretive and emotional potential of AI, Solo connects us to our emotions through mood inspired radio.

Born from a week­ long design sprint exploring the shift towards a more human AI, Solo combines facial feature recognition with music valence to read the nuance of expression and match tracks to your current mood. Sensing movement, Solo draws you in with its playful antenna. As you approach it takes your photo. It then sends that photo to a Microsoft API that analyses features and sends that information back again as an emotional breakdown with values measuring your happiness, sadness and anger. Solo translates these figures into a valence rating that corresponds with Spotify’s track valence ratings. Solo then plays the track it thinks you want to hear most. Kind of like a mix CD from a friend with great taste.

To get an insight on the thinking behind Solo, read my Medium post Designing With AI.