AI-Generated Artist Xania Monet Lands $3 Million Record Deal, Sparking Debate in Music Industry

An AI musician just got a multi-million dollar record deal

An AI-generated artist got a $3 million record deal.A human artist uses AI platform Suno to generate the persona.Creative industries continue to sue AI companies. An AI-generated musician persona run by a human R&B artist has received a $3 million record deal -- amidst several lawsuits targeting AI companies encroaching on creative industries. Also: Will AI damage human creativity? Most Americans say yes Telisha "Nikki" Jones, who's behind the AI-generated artist Xania Monet, accepted the record deal, which is with Hallwood Media. She combines elements of her real-life songwriting abilities with AI-generated vocals, images, and musical production. Jones uses AI music generation startup Suno -- which is currently being sued by the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) -- to make her music. This scenario presents two sides of one coin: While the RIAA claims Suno stole audio from YouTube videos, bypassing legal protections, others are using the platform to achieve stardom they wouldn't have accessed otherwise. According to Billboard, Jones writes all of Monet's lyrics and takes "full ownership" of the production credits. However, Murphy admitted to Billboard that Jones is not the "vocal beast" Monet is, though it's unclear how much Suno's platform is responsible for Monet's vocals. Also: AI songs are infiltrating Spotify - here's why it's an issue for fans and creators Monet first impacted charts during the week of Sept. 20, 2025, when her song "How Was I Supposed to Know" reached No.1 on R&B Digital Song Sales, Billboard writes. The same song enjoys TikTok popularity, achieving over 80,000 posts and the 39th spot on TikTok's Top 50 Music Chart. On TikTok, Xania Monet's page displays her 322,000 followers, over one million likes, and AI-generated videos of her singing in recording booths, studios, apartments, and sporting arenas. The vibrant colors, overly smoothed skin, oddly cut clips, and generally uncanny valley vibe immediately read as AI-generated to a trained eye. However, there isn't any mention of AI on Monet's page. Some users in the comments wonder when the other dedicated fans will realize the artist is AI-generated, while others explain how, despite being sung by an AI artist, Monet's lyrics deeply touch them, giving them a song that mirrors their life experiences. Others, are finding out via the comments that Monet is not a real person. Put simply: some people care, some people don't, and others have no clue. Also: iOS 26 just solved one of my biggest pain points with Apple Music According to Billboard's interview with Murphy, Monet plans to use more human producers on her upcoming music and is planning her first live performance, though it's unclear how. Hallwood Media has also signed a recording agreement with imoliver, Suno's top-streaming creator. The use of AI in creative spaces has been an ongoing debate since the technology's advancements began to encroach on artistic professionals. Visual artists, film directors, writers, and music artists have expressed irritation at artificial intelligence companies training their image, video, language, and voice models on existing works of art. Plenty of lawsuits have been filed -- almost always on the legal basis of copyright infringement. The RIAA's lawsuit against Suno alleges that the platform "stream-ripped" songs from artists on YouTube to train its AI voice models, a process that involves copying existing artists' voices and converting them into downloadable files. The suit represents labels like Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment. Also: AI's not 'reasoning' at all - how this team debunked the industry hype According to the RIAA's lawsuit, stream-ripping illegally uses copyrighted material from artists like Mariah Carey and The Temptations. Perhaps that's why some of Monet's commenters hear a mix of existing artists' voices in her recordings. Elsewhere, the New York Times sued OpenAI for unpermitted use of articles to train large language models, and Disney and Universal sued Midjourney for unpermitted use of their films and characters to train image creation models. Anthropic just settled a lawsuit with three authors. Individual artists have also sued other AI companies for using their work to train models, and the legal opinions are moving more slowly than the technology's development. Most of the defense lies in fair use, while artists and companies claim plagiarism and copyright infringement. If AI can land a record deal, who profits? At the very least, Jones is a public musician behind Monet's persona. But an R&B star whose voice, image, and promotional material are AI-generated draws comparisons to a popular AI-generated (and somewhat less transparent) influencer, Lil Miquela. Also: Will AI think like humans? We're not even close - and we're asking the wrong question Like Xania Monet, Lil Miquela signed a multi-million dollar deal with a talent agency, and there are real people behind her digital persona. The studio behind Lil Miquela and its investors receives the money Lil Miquela is paid from brand partnerships and advertisements. But many questions -- and few answers -- arise from asking the same about Monet. Surely, Jones, her manager, producers, and other studio personnel get a cut of her $3 million record deal, but could Suno or the AI platform responsible for Monet's digital appearance demand a cut? Technically, Suno and other AI platforms created Monet's voice and likeness, so how, if at all, do they fit into her moneymaking success? To some, the AI-generated artist's record deal indicates innovation in the music industry, giving opportunities to people without connections, wealth, or even conventional beauty. To others, like popular R&B artist Kehlani, it takes away from the real people who dedicate their lives and talents to their art. The artist expressed disdain for AI-generated music and for offering record deals to people who use it. Also: Stability's new AI audio tool creates custom sound for brands - how it works It'll be interesting to see how far Monet's career as an AI-generated music artist will go without media appearances and live performances, and how developed the track recordings can be within the technology's confines. The "AI in art" conversation also forces companies to reckon with how much they want to incorporate AI into their business models. Although the total use of AI to write articles, create artwork, or generate short motion pictures is considered taboo, is altogether omitting AI from creative practices an antiquated train of thought? Or, does the debate boil down to who uses AI within their creative practices? Perhaps the issue is that publishers, artists, studios, and record labels should have the option to lend their existing work to AI models, instead of having no say. The legal road to using generative AI in creative practices has already been long, and there are no signs of it shortening anytime soon.

AI musicians may be signing record deals, but that won't make the songs any better

Xania Monet is breaking records, but don't ask her to perform live A little-known artist named Xania Monet signing a reportedly $3 million record deal with Hallwood Media sounds like a nice musical dream, but there's a twist at the end of the tale. Xania isn't a traditional singer or producer. She's the brainchild of Telisha "Nikki" Jones, who used AI, specifically Suno, to turn her poetry into music. That album you heard climbing up the gospel and R&B digital charts is largely AI-composed. Jones isn't some Silicon Valley bro with a laptop full of prompt hacks. She's a poet, someone who's been writing since childhood. She grew up singing in church. The lyrics behind the Xania Monet project are apparently 90% percent hers and rooted in real stories. But the production, the voice, the polish is courtesy of the same Suno that major record labels are currently suing for copyright infringement. So now there's a song called "Let Go, Let God" charting on Billboard's Hot Gospel Songs and another one, "How Was I Supposed to Know," sitting at number one on R&B Digital Song Sales. Xania Monet is technically topping charts with nearly ten million streams in the U.S. alone. But she also doesn't exist. It's an impressive feat when AI tools like Suno take a paragraph of lyrics and generate a whole song around them in seconds. Some of those songs sound passably good, or even great, if perhaps a bit familiar. But does the success of Xania and other artificial artists come at a bigger cost? This isn't a screed against AI as a tool. Musicians always find ways to incorporate tools to enhance their work, even in the face of controversy. Electric guitars, synthesizers, and autotune have all faced or continue to face skepticism, even after becoming mainstays. However, what's happening here is arguably different. It's not just that AI is assisting in the creative process; it's about whether AI is doing so much that it ceases to be human music in anything but a superficial sense. To the average listener, this might not seem like a big deal. After all, if the song sounds good, who cares how it was made? There's a certain pragmatism in that attitude, especially in an age where digital manipulation is standard. But I'd argue it's one thing to polish a performance in post-production. It's another to create an entire identity around a machine-generated sound and expect people to connect with it emotionally. The illusion of intimacy with the prepackaged persona of most popular artists already has some problems, but at least there is a human being at the core of it all. Telisha Jones deserves credit for turning her poetry into something commercially viable, and it's not as though her background is fake. Still, the label's willingness to pay millions for an entirely fake character with AI-generated music is not about the poetry. Telisha Jones isn't being sold as a brilliant poet who used AI to bring her vision to life. She's being sold as Xania Monet, an R&B powerhouse. Hallwood wants to be an early investor in AI music. This isn't even their first AI signing. AI-generated music is spreading with uneven popularity. And at least this case doesn't involve an artist's name and voice attached to music they never performed or approved of, or that was produced long after they had passed away. But if labels begin prioritizing AI-assisted acts over flesh-and-blood musicians, we could see an erosion of opportunities for emerging artists. Touring bands, background vocalists, studio musicians, and all the people who traditionally help make an album risk being sidelined in favor of cheaper, faster, algorithm-friendly alternatives. Then there's the live performance question. What does a Xania Monet concert even look like? Will it be Telisha Jones lip-syncing to an AI's voice? Will it be a hologram playing the same track but with different AI-generated dance moves? A song can live online forever, but a performance lives or dies in the moment. If the live act doesn't match the voice fans fell in love with, will they still care? I do think AI-generated music has a place on the charts. Suno and other tools used effectively can be a means of expanding musical possibilities. It can help people overcome technical barriers and democratize access to high-end productions. But we should be honest about how it's different from human compositions. And once enough AI artists break through, labels will follow the money. They'll push more acts like Xania, refine the models, and streamline the process. And before long, the charts could be filled with songs that sound eerily similar, not because people follow a trend but because they're all coming from the same neural network. I hope Xania Monet's album sparks more discussion about AI music and how the technology fits into creative spaces. However, it will take thought lest we have kids assuming that all good music is technically perfect and emotionally vacant, with little or no human involvement. That would be a loss too big for even the best remix to fix.