Xania Monet is ‘a photorealistic digital avatar accompanied by a sound that computers have generated to resemble that of a human voice singing words’, writes Van Badham.Illustration: Talisha JonesView image in fullscreenXania Monet is ‘a photorealistic digital avatar accompanied by a sound that computers have generated to resemble that of a human voice singing words’, writes Van Badham.Illustration: Talisha JonesXania Monet’s music is the stuff of nightmares. Thankfully her AI ‘clankers’ will be limited to this cultural momentVan BadhamWhile a robot pop star may be novelty now, young people are maturing with a scorn for generic digital productsXania Monet is the latest digital nightmare to emerge from a hellscape of AI content production. No wonder she’s popular … but how long will it last?The music iteration of AI “actor” Tilly Norwood, Xania is a composite product manufactured of digital tools: in this case, a photorealistic avatar accompanied by a sound that computers have generated to resemble that of a human voice singing words.Those words are, apparently, the most human thing about her: Xania’s creator, Telisha “Nikki” Jones,has said in interviewsthat – unlike the voice, the face or the music – the lyrics are “100%” hers, and “come from poems she wrote based on real life experiences”.Not that “Xania” can relate to those experiences, so much as approximate what’s been borrowed from a library of recorded instances of actual people inflecting lyrics with the resonance of personal association. Some notes may sound like Christina Aguilera, some sound like Beyoncé, but – unlike any of her influences – Xania “herself” is never going to mourn, fear, risk anything for the cause of justice, make a difficult second album, explore her sexuality, confront the reality of ageing, wank, eat a cupcake or die.Paul McCartney joins music industry protest against AI with silent trackRead moreShe’s just a clearly branded audio-visual delivery vehicle for a familiar vibe and, when Jones herself is dead and gone, her “poems” can be fed into the AI’s infinite reproduction machine to be regenerated and resung for ever and ever and ever …… depending on the terms in the commercial music contract which Jones just signed, on behalf of her creation, for $3m – after Xania’s songs hit 17 million streams in two months, started charting on Billboard and resulted in a bidding war.With the rapid adoption of AI into the process of culture-making, the sudden commercial viability of Xania and products like her arerestarting conversationsabout the intersection of capitalism, creativity and opportunity that are as awkward as they are ancient.Awkward because, for all the romanticisation of human artistry, AI creatures don’t exist because a secretive cabal of aspirational robot overlords have forced them into lives. Xania exists because Telisha “Nikki” Jones is a creative entrepreneur who saw a market opportunity and 17 million freakin’ people turned up to download it.“Is this the future of music?” asked Forbes magazine of the Jones deal – but, more pertinently, it’s the present and the past. The “familiar vibe” of recorded music loops and samples were used by commercial producers long before Apple started making them available on home computer desktop apps more than 20 years ago. One wonders what Beethoven would have made of the tech, given he borrowed ideas fromMozart… who borrowed fromBach… who adapted themes fromVivaldi.If you’re concerned the face fronting the tune is not the person who wrote the song, I’ve got some terrible news for you aboutWhitney Houston,Céline Dion,Britney Spears,Elvis PresleyandFrank Sinatra.Entertainment has ever been the art of reference and illusion… which is why artists’ concerns swirl around AI’s capacity not to replace their creativity but as a potential channel for their exploitation.Any technofearful Redditor still persuaded by the myth of individual creative genius needs to familiarise themselves with words like “editor”, “dramaturg”, “amanuensis”, “arranger”, “fabricator”, “director”, “studio assistant” and “producer”. It takes a lot of folks to make one artist –not even David Bowieran his show alone.And while Xania Monet may indeed be as immortal and unchanging as systems of digital storage and electronic retrieval allow, her appeal is as limited as the cultural moment she represents.AI slop tops Billboard and Spotify charts as synthetic music spreadsRead moreAs contexts shift, so does generational taste. Just ask the castrati – the high-voiced boy singers displaced when Enlightenment liberalism restored female performers to the stage.So while a disembodied robot pop star may be novelty now, young people are maturing with a scorn for the sameyness of the digital products that saturate the mainstream cultural experience, denouncing the ubiquitous AI slop as“clankers”, with the same disdain of the young people who once chose the Beatles over Dean Martin, then the Beastie Boys over Led Zep.As other countries join Australia and Denmark in restricting young people’s access to social media, that realm of generational experience will have even clearer cultural demarcations. As rumours of a return toanalogue funcontinue to spread, so it is likely that tastes inspired by in-person gatherings around music and art, the consumption of printed materials and the spectacle of, uh, slide nights and maybe even theatre (God help us) will grow.I congratulate Monet/Jones on realising their moment. The only future music makers can be guaranteed is that the times will have their own favourite sound … and that the kids who come after will borrow the bits that they like, and move on.Explore more on these topicsArtificial intelligence (AI)OpinioncommentShareReuse this content