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Actualité
26/9/25

Xania Monet: When AI Climbs the Charts, and Challenges Copyright Law

September 2025 may be remembered as a turning point in the music industry.

The virtual character Xania Monet, created with the help of artificial intelligence, signed a recording agreement reportedly worth USD 3 million with Hallwood Media.

This development did not merely spark a wave of media fascination.

It triggered a more profound reflection within the legal community — particularly among those dealing with intellectual property (IP) law in the music sector.

A Commercial Breakthrough That Cannot Be Dismissed

Before the contract was even announced, Xania Monet had already achieved notable commercial traction:

  • The single “How Was I Supposed to Know” reached the No. 1 position on the U.S. R&B Digital Song Sales chart and accumulated over 5 million combined streams on YouTube and Spotify within the first weeks of release.
  • Another song, “Let Go, Let God”, entered the Billboard Hot Gospel Songs chart, while the project itself ranked No. 25 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart and one track climbed to No. 21 on Hot Gospel Songs.
  • Several industry sources reported that total streams for Xania Monet soon approached 10 million, with a substantial share generated in a single week — a remarkable performance for an AI-driven project.

These figures demonstrate that the case is not a mere publicity stunt.

Xania Monet has shown genuine market adoption and audience engagement.

When AI Creation Meets the Threshold of Copyright

Beyond revenue and curiosity, the Xania Monet case raises a fundamental question:

Is the existing copyright framework, in particular the requirement of human authorship, fit to address hybrid human-AI creations?

Under French and continental European law, copyright protection traditionally requires that a work bear “the imprint of the author’s personality”.

In this instance, while Telisha Jones, a poet and creative director, authored the lyrics and provided artistic direction, the musical composition, voice, and arrangements were largely produced by the generative-AI platform Suno.

This hybrid model gives rise to several legal uncertainties:

  • If the core sonic elements are not attributable to a human being, can they qualify as a “work” under the French Code de la propriété intellectuelle?
  • What exactly does the label acquire: a genuine copyright in the musical work or merely a licence to exploit algorithmically-generated files?
  • How do we treat the related rights of performers, which under French law belong to natural persons who render a performance?

Will Music Industry Contracts Have to Be Rewritten?

The USD 3 million deal with Hallwood Media, a figure rarely seen for a new artist, shows that the industry is willing to invest in this new category of creative asset.

Yet it also illustrates the scale of the legal challenge.

Record labels will no longer be negotiating merely for masters or neighbouring rights in traditional performances, but for rights that depend on the traceability, provenance, and legality of AI-generated outputs.

Future agreements in the sector will likely need to address, inter alia:

  • Provenance and authorised use of training data for the AI model;
  • Warranties against infringement, including against the unlicensed imitation of protected voices, melodies or timbres of human artists;
  • A clear determination of the status of the “performer” and an appropriate allocation of streaming revenues;
  • Contractual terms governing the live performance or derivative exploitation (e.g. remixes, synchronisations) of music initially generated by AI.

Innovation Versus Legal Certainty: A Fragile Balance

The European AI Act now requires certain levels of transparency and documentation for high-risk AI systems.

However, it does not resolve the crucial issue of who owns the rights in AI-generated outputs.

The impressive commercial metrics of Xania Monet demonstrate that this issue can no longer remain at the margins of academic debate.

It is already central to contractual negotiations, investment decisions and transactional security in the global music industry.

A Wake-Up Call for Creators, Investors and Legal Practitioners

The rise of Xania Monet could mark the beginning of a profound reshaping of the rules of the game in music production and exploitation.

It challenges record labels, streaming platforms, AI developers and legal counsel alike to develop new contractual tools and pragmatic approaches to balance technological innovation with the fundamental principles of copyright.

The question is no longer whether artificial intelligence participates in musical creation — it already does.

The challenge now is to determine how the law will support or constrain this transformation, so as to preserve the value of works and the trust of both artists and investors.

This article has been prepared by a lawyer qualified under French law in the field of intellectual property. Its analysis is therefore based on the French and European legal frameworks.

For any precise assessment of the recording contract concluded between Xania Monet and Hallwood Media, readers should seek advice from a U.S.-qualified attorney familiar with the applicable laws and industry practices in the United States.

Vincent FAUCHOUX
Formation juridique
Propriété intellectuelle : formez vos équipes au-delà de la conformité
Stratégie PI, preuve d’antériorité, secrets d’affaires, outils de valorisation : une formation sur-mesure animée par nos avocats.
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