Kehlani slammed the music industry’s embrace of artificial intelligence after an AI artist scored a major record deal and chart success.
Kehlani called out the music industry’s growing reliance on artificial intelligence after a digital R&B act reportedly landed a multi-million dollar record deal and charted a Top 5 album without ever stepping into a studio.
The Grammy-nominated singer didn’t hold back in a TikTok video posted this week, reacting to news that AI-generated artist Xania Monet—created by Mississippi songwriter Telisha “Nikki” Jones—secured a lucrative contract with Neil Jacobson and his label Hallwood Media.
“There is an AI R&B artist who just signed a multi-million-dollar deal, and has a Top 5 R&B album, and the person is doing none of the work,” Kehlani said.
Jones, who writes the lyrics, uses the AI platform Suno to generate the vocals and music for Xania Monet. The project has already pulled in millions of streams, according to Billboard.
Kehlani, 30, warned that AI’s growing role in music creation threatens the livelihood of working musicians. “AI can also make the entire f###### song. It can sing the entire song. It can make the entire beat,” she said.
Her harshest words were aimed at the industry’s willingness to replace human labor with machine-generated content.
“This is so beyond out of our control. Nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me. Especially not f###### AI in the creative arts, in which people have worked hard for, trained for, slept on the floor for, f###### got injuries for, worked their entire lives for. I’m sorry, I don’t respect it.”
@kehlani all yall in the comments saying God annointed her.. baby that is a computer!!! 😭😭😭😭😭 #AI ♬ original sound – Kehlani
The U.S. Copyright Office weighed in earlier this year, clarifying that while AI can be used as a tool to assist human creativity, works where “expressive elements are determined by a machine” are not eligible for copyright protection.
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