The creator of Xania Monet has stepped out from behind the screen and defended her AI project.
“I wanted people to know that there is a real person behind Xania,” The poet and programmer Tulisha ‘Nikki’ Jones told CBS Mornings last Thursday (November 6). “There is real emotion and soul put into those lyrics.”
‘Xania’ is an avatar she created while she was teaching herself AI just a few months back but Jones confirmed that all the lyrics come “100%” from her before revealing that Xania has been getting fan letters.
“But Nikki, they think Xania is a real person,” the interviewer protests before Jones interjected. “Xania is an extension of me so I look at her as a real person.”
"But you can’t sing, so she’s not a real person,” the interviewer countered, saying that ‘Xania’ was in effect a shortcut that was taking the spotlight away from singers who have put in the hard yards. “I wouldn’t call it a shortcut because I still had to put in the work,” said Jones. “AI – I look at it as a tool and I’m going to utilise it.”
Jones even takes the interviewer through the steps of putting together a Monet track, going into Suno and adding prompts before she’s happy with the track that the program has created.
As for the accusations that the Monet project is endangering the livelihoods of artists who have sweated buckets to get where they are, Jones merely says: “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.”
But what if you had a white male programmer who was using Suno to create a black R&B singer – would that be ok? Jones umms and errs: “I mean... if they created it.” Though she does agree that people are right to be worried that AI opens the door to that sort of cultural appropriation.
It’s difficult to know right now if Monet is a one-off or the thin end of a very large wedge. Part of its success right now is undoubtedly down to Jones’s real, 100% human lyrics. Will the fact that Jones has now stepped out from behind the laptop and revealed herself actually aid her project? Or will the knowledge that Monet isn’t real spoil the music for others?
Clearly this debate is going to run and run. In all likelihood Jones/Monet is going to be one of those pop phenomena everyone has to have an opinion about.
