Xania Monet becomes first AI singer to debut on Billboard charts

Artificial intelligence has now reached another major milestone in the music industry. Xania Monet has become the first known artificial artiste to get enough radio play to appear on a Billboard chart.

Billboard reported that Monet started gaining attention after releasing her first songs in the summer of 2025. Her song "Let Go, Let God" made it to the Hot Gospel Songs chart, and another song, "How Was I Supposed to Know," appeared on the Hot R&B Songs chart.

Monet already has more than 146,000 followers on Instagram, showing that she is growing in popularity. On her Apple Music profile, she is described as "an AI figure presented as a contemporary R&B vocalist". 

The virtual artiste was created by Telisha Nikki Jones, a poet from Mississippi. Jones writes the lyrics for Monet's songs and uses a generative AI music tool called "Suno" to produce the tracks. Monet released her first album "Unfolded" in August with 24 songs, and a seven-song EP "Pieces Left Behind" came out in September.

A press release described Monet's voice as "smooth, soulful, and human-like." Her manager, Romel Murphy, told CNN, "AI doesn't replace the artiste. It's a new frontier. Some people are open to it, and some are worried. But creativity and the human experience are still at the heart of it."

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Billboard mentioned that in recent months, at least six AI or AI-assisted artistes have entered its music charts. The real number could be even higher, as it's often hard to tell when AI is used in creating music.

However, many human musicians are worried about what AI means for their work. Singer Kehlani criticised the trend in a now-deleted TikTok video, saying, "There is an AI R&B artiste who just signed a multimillion-dollar deal and isn't doing any of the work. Nothing and no one will ever be able to justify AI to me."