Singer Kehlani is not impressed by the music industry’s latest move in integrating artificial intelligence.
In an interesting development reported by Billboard, an AI-generated artist by the moniker Xania Monet was signed by Hallwood Media in a deal reported to be worth $3 million.
Writer Telisha “Nikki” Jones, a poet and designer, is behind the songwriting and uses the AI platform Suno to create the rest of the music after writing the lyrics.
The AI-generated artist Xania Monet’s record deal follows the success of her song ‘Let Go, Let God,’ which debuted at NO. 25 on the Emerging Talents list and reached No. 21 on the Hot Gospel Songs.
The record deal has generated reactions from observers, including Grammy-nominated singer Kehlani, who took to TikTok to share that she doesn’t respect it.
“There is an AI R&B artist who just signed a multimillion-dollar deal … and the person is doing none of the work. This is so beyond our control,” she says on the capacity of AI making an entire song.
The signing is the latest controversy to rock the global music industry, which is still grappling with how artificial intelligence will change the industry, especially in terms of artist prioritization.
This is not the first time an AI artist has been signed. In 2022, Capitol Records reportedly signed an AI-generated rapper, FN Meka, a virtual rapper with an impressive 10 million TikTok followers, earning it the status of TikTok’s top virtual being.
Recently, music streaming service Deezer revealed that around 30,000 tracks created, at least partially, with AI are added to the platform every day. This accounts for 28% of the songs uploaded to the platform.
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There have also been concerns over how AI-generated songs can be used to create music faster, as some machines can make a track every 5 minutes.
In 2024, a 52-year-old American, Michael Smith, was indicted for using artificial intelligence tools and thousands of bots to fraudulently stream songs billions of times to claim millions of dollars in royalties.
