Xania Monet has become the first AI-generated artist to debut on a Billboard airplay chart — and her success is raising questions about what the future could hold for human artists looking to achieve the same feat.
How Was I Supposed to Know? appeared on the Adult R&B Airplay chart at No. 30 on Nov. 1. The song first gained traction online, especially on platforms like TikTok, earning enough streams and purchases to debut on both the R&B Digital Song Sales chart and the Hot R&B Songs chart in September.
Created by Mississippi-based poet and songwriter Telisha “Nikki” Jones, Xania Monet (pronounced “zuh-Nī-ah,” rhyming with Shania) sings Jones’s lyrics set to R&B music with the help of Suno, an AI music-generating platform.
“Xania is an extension of me, so I look at her as a real person,” Jones told CBS Mornings Wednesday. “I’m just taking what I love doing and mixing it with tech.”
Monet’s ability to translate her online momentum into radio airplay in just four months has bolstered the fear that AI artists pose a real threat to the livelihoods of human artists. As a result, there have been renewed calls for legislation to protect the rights of real musicians, in an industry with few protections otherwise.
“It sounds like a great southern R&B artist,” said Tristan (Triz) Douglas, a radio personality with the Toronto-based urban contemporary station Flow 98.7. “It gives me the sound of, like, Beyoncé or Fantasia.”
But Douglas says he has concerns because Monet isn’t real — and he doesn’t want to bump a real musician for an AI-generated one.
WATCH | Lyric video for How Was I Supposed to Know:
Monet first appeared online in mid-July Since then, the AI artist has released 44 songs on Spotify and has gained around 769,000 followers combined across Instagram, YouTube and TikTok — and another 1.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify. In September, the AI artist secured a multi-million-dollar record deal, though it’s not quite clear who benefits from it.
Romel Murphy, Monet’s manager, told CNN the intention behind the AI artist is to enhance the artistry of Jones’ lyrics.
“We used AI as a tool, which is what it was created for. We used it to enhance our artistry,” Murphy said. “We created real R&B music, music that was rooted in the truth — real lyrics, and her real life experiences and life lessons. AI helped us bring the message to life and deliver it to the world. But the artistry and the message behind it is all human.”
Whatever the intention behind the creation, Douglas said he isn’t ready to hear AI music on the radio.
“I think here at Flow, we know what our listeners want. And although that artist might have numbers elsewhere, it just doesn’t — it doesn’t feel right for us,” he said. “Right now, I would say Flow’s airwaves are reserved for real artists.”
While he understands that AI can be used in different ways to support creating new music, Douglas said the technology can be a slippery slope.
“I support the tool to get the product out. I just don’t support the entire tool being the product …. What’s going to happen when it’s time to go on tour? Are we going to get holograms?”
Considering the station gets “tons of music submissions” from people looking for their big break, Douglas thinks there needs to be a wider conversation about whether AI-generated music should get space on the radio.
“There are a ton of real artists here in the city, let alone across the world, that are just waiting to be discovered and heard,” he said. “Let’s put our time and effort into that.”
For artists, there’s concern that real people — who bring emotion and lived experience to their music — could be phased out in favour of technology that can generate content at an unmatchable pace. Joey La Neve DeFrancesco, founder of the advocacy organization United Musicians and Allied Workers, said it’s difficult enough for artists to make a living today, due to the popularity of streaming platforms.
“We’re hearing a lot from our members, and from people that I am around, that this is terrifying,” he said. “It’s yet more very clear evidence of how desperately we need regulation around AI, and around digital music more broadly, because there’s just hardly anything.”
AI artists like Monet don’t just find success overnight, he says, no matter how it may look online. Instead, he says it’s the result of streaming services, record labels and other major industry players putting millions of dollars into supporting AI artists, siphoning it away from real ones.
“We’re seeing just how the music industry works, as they can promote whatever they want to the top,” DeFrancesco said. “Without regulation we’re going to be seeing more and more of this.”
But as generative AI technology continues to evolve rapidly across all sectors, it’s unclear exactly how its use in the music industry can or should be regulated.
Miro Oballa, an entertainment lawyer and partner at Toronto’s Taylor Oballa Murray Leyland, says copyright law often falls behind technological advancements — so there’s little legislation governing the use of AI in making music.
“For the most part, I would say what the common consensus right now is, is that something made entirely by a machine is not capable of copyright protection,” he said. “There needs to be human input.”
When it comes to said legislation, Oballa says it will take some time to figure out the best approach.
And he noted there would be difficulties in legislating how you can and can’t use AI in the industry.
“I mean, you can legislate anything, but I don’t think that’s the right way to do it.”
As for why music executives would want to support an AI artist, Oballa says the business case is likely about minimizing risk.
“People get nervous. People have anxiety issues. People end up having children, people’s priorities change, right? Sometimes people develop addiction issues, right? There’s a whole bunch of things that can come into play, that can disrupt the predictability and reliability of consistent, replicable creative output,” he said.
“That’s where an AI artist starts to have some appeal, and that’s where possibly the interests of the industry and the artists start to diverge.”
