An AI-powered artist is climbing the charts and just signed a multi-million dollar record deal. But what exactly is a label buying when they sign an AI-powered artist?
As first reported by Billboard, record labels took meetings last week with Xania Monet, a little-known R&B act who’s racked up millions of streams. One small wrinkle: Monet is actually an AI-powered creation of a Mississippi woman named Telisha Jones, who writes her own lyrics but uses the AI platform Suno to make them into music.
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The deal inked by Jones — a multimillion-dollar agreement signed by ex-Interscope exec Neil Jacobson’s indie music company Hallwood Media — marks the latest advance of AI into every corner of American life. But the buzz surrounding the deal, which some of the major labels ultimately backed away from, highlights the legal limbo that music companies and creators face as they adopt the new tech.
Creators like Jones can secure intellectual property protection on the lyrics and music they write themselves, but that protection depends on the extent to which AI is used in the process — and to what extent they disclose that.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Copyright Office issued a major report that said using AI as an “assistive tool” for human expression would be fair game, but that copyrights would not be granted where “expressive elements are determined by a machine.” But where does that dividing line sit for any particular song? The report said it needs to be decided on a “case-by-case” basis.
If a work isn’t copyrighted, there’s no recourse for anyone to be able to protect it in the marketplace, including through takedown requests against others who upload versions to streaming services and attempt to monetize them. There is also a question as to who would be able to collect any royalties from the digital exploitation of such a song, if the question of ownership is unsettled.
Sources tell Billboard that Xania Monet is confident she owns the rights to both her master recordings and musical compositions, given the amount of human input used to create her music as well as the lyrics. Hallwood Media did not return a request for comment.
Legal experts say such AI-assisted music raises tricky questions. The lyrics penned by Jones are obviously hers, but her manager says she used a combination of Suno’s model and other live elements to create the music. But that raises a key question: How much human contribution does it take to establish copyrights on an entire song?
“This strikes me as the central question, and one without a clear answer,” says Kristelia García, a legal scholar at Georgetown University Law Center who testified before Congress last year on this exact issue.
Suno’s involvement is less complex. Under its terms of service, subscribers of Suno’s premium tiers are given control given full control of songs they create. Such users “own the songs” and “retain the rights to commercial use,” Suno says, “even if you end your subscription.” And in meetings with prospective labels this month, Monet told executives that she owned her recordings as a Suno subscriber, sources say, and she’s been shopping for a publishing partner separately.
A rep for Suno did not immediately return a request for comment on Monet’s deal.
Complicating matters further is the unresolved legality of platforms like Suno themselves. Don’t forget: Some labels backed away from offering Monet a deal partly because they’re currently suing Suno — a case that’s part of a trillion-dollar legal battle over whether it’s legal to use vast troves of copyrighted works to create AI platforms.
In the case against Suno, the labels claimed the company had illegally used existing songs on an “unimaginable scale,” in the process “trampling the rights of copyright owners.” Suno has fired back that it merely analyzes public data to “enable people to make their own new creations” — something it says is clearly protected as a “fair use” of copyrighted works.
Until those cases are definitively resolved — a process that could take years — they’ll pose another level of uncertainty for any company that might otherwise strike deals for AI music. Why ink a deal with an artist whose music is reliant on a service you’re actively suing, and one that might later turn out to be illegal?
Given all that uncertainty, experts say record deals with AI artists might be better understood as an attempt to win publicity in an AI-dominated news cycle, or an effort to secure first-mover advantage in a booming market — perhaps a small price to pay for a future AI-powered superstar.
“Labels are surely paying for earned media and buzz around such AI ‘artists,’” says Nathaniel Bach, a litigator at the law firm Manatt who’s written extensively about AI law. “Whether fans develop long-term connections with such avatars — or if they are more of a novelty act — remains to be seen.”
