‘Artists,’ consumers willingly bed down in holes dug by AI overlords

In September of 2025 Billboard reported a brand new artist debuting on the charts, even hitting number one in R&B song sales, under the name Xania Monet; this artist would soon go on to score a three million dollar record deal. Simultaneously, an actor named Tilly Norwood burst onto the scene, receiving recognition from a plethora of celebrities while entering talks with talent agencies before ever being in a film. The connection between the two? They don’t exist. Both Monet and Norwood are AI personas artificially created for their prospective industries. Over the last few years the artificial intelligence industry has absolutely exploded, and though economists predict the bubble will soon burst, it has yet to do so. Corporations and the public at large, armed with easily accessible generative AI, are jumping at the opportunity to scrape whatever is left on the dirty shoes of capitalist overlords. Not only is AI “art” a slap in the face to real artists, insulting to human creativity itself, but it is a reminder of how far the economy has descended, creating a dark cloud over a land of late stage capitalism. In order to understand how harmful generative AI can be, it is important to first understand the origins of  faces like Monet and Norwood. Their vastly different paths to fame represent the spectrum of AI’s crimes against humanity. 

Norwood, and a fleet of similar AI ‘talent,’ are the brainchildren of Dutch producer Eline Van der Velden. She owns a production company called Particle6 with a division dubbed Xicoia, a completely AI-oriented branch. The studio advertises itself as “the world’s most scalable and profitable synthetic talent platform,” which is perhaps the most transparently dystopian slogan possible. Tilly Norwood was not created for the sake of emotional, inspired films, it was made purely to make money. Historically, art created solely for the sake of profit has been the ugly underbelly of an otherwise healthy hobby, but now, motivations are abundantly clear. 

In Martine Nyx’s article ‘Art and Profit: A Troubled History,’ she says, simply, “Art cannot be solely created to make money.” It’s not that Xicoia won’t be profitable, it’s that it won’t and can’t make art. Nyx says, “It is only when an artist experiences the unstoppable urge to create a specific artwork, and when they are being truly authentic to themselves, that one has a true work of art.” It also has nothing to do with the quality of the product. Right now, AI generative “art” isn’t great, but eventually it could be indistinguishable from human made works, and yet, by the nature of AI, it won’t have any soul, it won’t say anything. The philosophical definition of what actually qualifies as art has long been debated, but generally art is anything intended to turn technical skill into a message of emotion or power. AI is incapable of filling any of these criteria. AI has no technical skill and cannot convey a message of emotion, because it can only replicate. Generative AI programs such as Dalle and Midjourney and now, Sora, are all trained on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of original artworks created by unconsenting real people. All those people had a vision and a message and a lifetime’s worth of experiences that companies have swooped in to categorize by keyword, allowing machines to regurgitate for the sake of profit. 

Oppositely, and yet equally concerning, is the creation of Xania Monet. Monet is the voice of a real creative person by the name of Telisha Jones. Unlike many AI “musicians” which have polluted the fabric of music streaming platforms, Jones actually writes the majority of Monet’s lyrics, and they are based on her own experiences. She said in an interview with CBS news, “[The] lyrics are 100% me.” Yet, due to a lack of confidence in her singing and production talents, she has adopted the character of Monet. In order to avoid the vulnerability which is essential in real art, Jones has outsourced her passion to a corporation. But now, the originality, the message, though the meaning may be real, has been drowned in a sea of too-smooth vocals. Worse, Jones has proven  unreceptive to criticism. When authentic human R&B singer Kehlani released a statement against the AI contamination of the genre, Jones fired up her precious bot in order to release a diss track in response. She has become so attached to the AI, by entangling her art with Monet’s AI imitation, that she sees it as an extension of herself. In the same interview she said “Xania is an extension of me.” Jones, to an extent, sees herself as Xania Monet; she’s paying a subscription for her identity all while destroying her humanity. 

Public opinion about the AI invasion of artistic spaces is already negative, but it also may be misdirected. While people like Jones and Van der Velden are partially responsible, it falls more on the shoulders of the companies offering these tools in the first place - the faceless boardroom worms who saw art and thought “how can we make money off that?”The economy, though some people think it, cannot and will not regulate itself. Consumers are victims of capitalism, they will do anything to dig themselves out a hole, including the weaponization of generative AI, and they cannot be blamed for that. Rather, we should be blaming the companies who dug the holes in the first place. The government has to be more active in regulating artificial intelligence, particularly AI “art”. Otherwise, generative AI may destroy the only thing separating humans from zoo animals. 

by Isaac Considine-Buelow

Published February 9, 2026

Oshkosh West Index Volume 122 Issue IV