Napster is entering the education field. The former music-streaming giant, now an AI company, plans to use AI to produce what it calls “digital twins” of teachers who can answer students’ questions outside of school hours.
Last week, Napster announced a partnership with the United Arab Emirates’ GEMS Education, one of the largest private K-12 school operators in the Middle East, that includes plans to develop and test digital teacher personas to provide multilingual, 24/7 support for students.
The program would be based on Napster Learn, which uses a clip-on AI assistant, Napster View to interact with users. The program aims to deploy across GEMS schools in the Middle East by the end of 2026, following the introduction of an AI curriculum in the UAE earlier this month.
A Napster representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company statement says that guardrails and safety protocols will be incorporated into the design and that they will keep “humans informed and able to intervene if necessary.”
But the partnership is sure to raise concerns. It’s conceivable that schools could use 24/7 digital avatars as an excuse to cut staff or lower pay. And AI models are known for producing incorrect facts and bizarre hallucinations, meaning a digital teacher could easily spread misinformation to students in multiple languages before anyone catches the mistake. It’s also worrisome that the plan could be part of a general trend toward replacing human interaction with computers.
Some international policy proposals, such as a recent Chinese proposal on AI companions, specifically warn against technology that makes kids emotionally dependent on artificial characters rather than real people.
Napster, first a file-sharing app and then a streaming service, was acquired in 2025 by tech startup Infinite Reality, which specializes in VR and AI.
Senior editor Ty Pendlebury has been reviewing TVs and home entertainment for CNET since 2006. He has a cat named after one of the best TVs ever made.
