In November 2025, artist Xania Monet made her debut on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart at No.30 with her single “How Was I Supposed to Know?” However, one thing distinguishes it from the other 103 titles that made the chart this year: Xania is not human. Created by Telisha Jones, Monet delivers her lyrics in an R&B style using Suno, an AI music-generation platform. Although not the first AI-driven artist to gain online popularity, Monet’s chart debut deepens the conversation regarding ethics in AI-generated art.
An Exclusive Industry Becoming Even More So
In 2021, fewer than 0.4% of musicians reached one million monthly streams on platforms, which is the level estimated as necessary to make a living from streaming alone. Within only months, Monet reached this milestone and signed a $3 million deal with Hallwood Media. For most new artists, success requires years of hard work and luck; among the 1.3 million artists added to Chartmetric in 2024, only 0.05% reached the top 35,000 in global streams, while 87.6% remain undiscovered. Meanwhile, AI systems can compose dozens of polished tracks in the time it takes a human artist to write and record one. As the industry grows more comfortable relying on AI-made products, there’s a real risk that human talent will be treated as optional.
Data: USC Annenberg and Facts About the U.S. Black Population, Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. (January 23, 2025)
Using AI-Created Black Women as Digital Puppets
These technological shifts often hit marginalized communities first. Monet’s success exposes deeper tensions in R&B, a genre historically defined by Black women. Depicted as a Black woman herself, Monet edges toward digital blackface by allowing labels to profit from a Black female image and sound without investing in actual Black female artists. This isn’t new; from Elvis with Rock & Roll to Paul Whiteman with Jazz, Black music has repeatedly been repackaged while excluding its creators from their own space.
In the R&B market built on Black women’s labour, an AI act designed to fit existing stereotypes threatens to drown out emerging artists, reinforce narrow definitions of what a “successful” artist should look and sound like, and raise barriers for anyone who differs from those expectations. Even more troubling, AI-generated music can only be created based on sounds that already exist. Normalizing Monet’s success doesn’t just displace human artists; it threatens to freeze artistic and cultural evolution entirely.
Driven by Financial Interests, not Artistry
The infrastructure enabling this shift is already in place. Streaming platforms like Spotify drive discovery through curated playlists. Research shows listeners are less accepting of music once learning it’s artificial, yet Spotify remains hesitant to flag artificial content. This is a deceptive choice, given that the platform directly profits from it. As AI slowly creeps into curated collections, Spotify effectively avoids paying labels and real musicians while keeping unaware users engaged.
Xania Monet’s chart debut marks a crossroads. If embraced as a cost-cutting tool, AI will deepen existing inequalities in race, gender, and access while wearing the aesthetic of diversity. AI can be a valuable tool for small artists; however, an ethical future requires platforms to provide full transparency so listeners can make informed choices about the content they support. The industry must redirect investment toward the human artists AI threatens to displace, especially those from marginalized communities that are already exploited and excluded. The question isn’t whether AI belongs in music; it’s whether we’ll allow it to exacerbate the same injustices that have always plagued the industry.
This article was written by a guest contributor, Z. Dang.
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