Xania Monet sweeps inaugural US AI Music Awards
The Los Angeles ceremony honoured creators of AI-made songs as winners argued that prompting and human authorship amount to a new musical genre.
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The first U.S. AI Music Awards were held in downtown Los Angeles on Friday, giving a dedicated awards stage to people behind songs made at least partly with artificial intelligence. Xania Monet, an AI-generated avatar created by Telisha “Nikki” Jones, took the leading prizes for AI artist, song and album of the year.
The awards were chosen by AI artists who belong to the Sonic Intelligence Academy. SIQA had named nominees for the inaugural programme in October, as we reported at the time.
Xania Monet is known for “How Was I Supposed to Know?”, which Billboard identified as the first song by an AI-based act to appear on one of its radio charts. Jones wrote the lyrics herself before using AI to turn them into music. She said AI music was something people “just have to get used to.”
Presenters and winners argued that the work should be treated as a new genre, saying it required conventional artistic input as well as hours of prompts to achieve the intended sound. Drake Murphy said: “In a world where everybody calls AI fake, the human behind it is real.” J. Frequency said the work done behind the scenes was “hard work, contrary to popular belief.”
The event had initially been planned as a two-day summit and awards programme. SIQA had said the awards would be decided by verified AI artists rather than algorithmic charts; it also created AI-music charts and tools intended to identify songs made with AI.
The celebration came amid a sharper industry argument over synthetic music. Musicians have raised concerns that AI-generated tracks could make it harder for human performers to gain traction and reduce work for producers, singers, engineers and songwriters. Record labels have sued Anthropic and OpenAI, alleging unlawful use of copyrighted works in model training, while the companies have argued that US fair-use doctrine can permit unlicensed use in some circumstances.
Xania Monet had already appeared on at least five Billboard charts after its first release, and Jones’s AI music success brought a multimillion-dollar exclusive recording agreement with Hallwood Media.
- Medium Music