Billboard Says AI-Powered ‘Artists’ Are Increasingly Hitting The Charts

1 month ago 19

Topline

Billboard says a wave of AI-created music has debuted on its charts over the past month—one “singer” even scored a record deal—as some of these fake personas rack up millions of streams, a stark new trend that has raised some alarms in the music industry.

Multiple AI "artists" have debuted on the Billboard charts this month. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

NurPhoto via Getty Images

Key Facts

Over the past four weeks, a new AI creation has debuted on a Billboard chart in each week, Billboard reported, including the AI country music product Breaking Rust, that debuted the songs “Livin’ On Borrowed Time” and “Walk My Walk” on the country song sales chart this week.

The Christian AI-generated Juno Skye debuted on Billboard’s emerging artists chart last week, while the AI act Enlly Blue’s song “Through My Soul” hit the rock sales song chart earlier this month, Billboard reported.

The outlet said it cross-checked the songs with Deezer, a platform that offers an AI-detection tool, to verify whether the songs were artificially generated.

The most prominent example on Billboard’s charts is Xania Monet, an AI-generated singer that has racked up more than 44 millions streams in the United States, though the songs are written by Mississippi-based songwriter Telisha “Nikki” Jones.

Xania Monet has already charted on plenty of Billboard charts since debuting over the summer, including a No. 1 hit on the R&B song sales chart, and this week became the first AI-generated act to rank a song on Billboard’s radio airplay chart.

Xania Monet’s vocals are generated by Suno, an AI platform that was sued by major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America last year for using copyrighted material to train its AI tools.

Surprising Fact

Jones, Monet’s creator, signed a multimillion dollar record deal with record label Hallwood Media in September, Billboard reported, after a bidding war reportedly reached $3 million.

How Have Ai Creations Found Success?

Some of the AI acts that have made waves on the Billboard charts have curated social media profiles as if they are real people. Xania Monet’s Instagram page has more than 144,000 followers, and its account regularly posts purporting to show the artist recording songs in a studio. “I write music,” Xania Monet’s Instagram bio says, even though Xania Monet is not a real person and her songs are written by Jones. The Instagram pages for Breaking Rust and Enlly Blue, each of which have thousands of followers, similarly depict AI-generated personas performing their songs or recording music videos. The people curating these AI acts may also have a financial incentive, Billboard reported, estimating late last month Monet’s small music catalog has already generated more than $52,000 in revenue after racking up 17 million streams in the United States. It’s unclear how much of that revenue goes to Jones, the credited songwriter on Monet’s music, Billboard reported, though it noted platforms like Spotify don’t have specific policies for how AI-generated songs can collect royalties, meaning they can generate revenue like any other song.

Chief Critics

Singer Kehlani slammed Xania Monet’s record deal in a since-deleted post on TikTok in September. “Nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me,” Kehlani said, according to Billboard, stating she doesn’t respect the AI creation. She lamented that these AI acts make their music based on the copyrighted material AI generators are trained on without having to credit anyone. Terry McBride, co-founder and CEO of record label Nettwerk Music Group, told Billboard he would not have signed Xania Monet or any other AI artist. “That’s not going to be a touring entity as we know it,” McBride said, adding, “Even if it did hundreds of millions of streams, we have no interest in that.”

Tangent

The film industry is also grappling with AI-generated personas, notably the AI-generated “actress” Tilly Norwood, which was unveiled by an AI studio in September and quickly drew condemnation from the SAG-AFTRA actor’s guild. The union said “creativity is, and should remain, human-centered,” stating it is “opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics” which have “no life experience to draw from.” Other actors, including Whoopi Goldberg, Emily Blunt and Melissa Barrera also criticized this use of AI. The AI personality was created by Eline Van der Velden, who launched the AI talent studio Xicoia and claimed multiple film studios were interested in employing her creation. Like the AI-generated musicians, Tilly Norwood has an Instagram page with more than 65,000 followers that posts as if the AI actress is a real person.