Xania Monet’s music is the stuff of nightmares. Thankfully her AI ‘clankers’ will be limited to this cultural moment | Van Badham
Xania Monet is the latest digital nightmare to emerge from a hellscape of AI content production,No wonder she’s popular … but how long will it last?The music iteration of AI “actor” Tilly Norwood, Xania is a composite product manufactured of digital tools: in this case, a photorealistic avatar accompanied by a sound that computers have generated to resemble that of a human voice singing words,Those words are, apparently, the most human thing about her: Xania’s creator, Telisha “Nikki” Jones, has said in interviews that – unlike the voice, the face or the music – the lyrics are “100%” hers, and “come from poems she wrote based on real life experiences”,Not that “Xania” can relate to those experiences, so much as approximate what’s been borrowed from a library of recorded instances of actual people inflecting lyrics with the resonance of personal association,Some notes may sound like Christina Aguilera, some sound like Beyoncé, but – unlike any of her influences – Xania “herself” is never going to mourn, fear, risk anything for the cause of justice, make a difficult second album, explore her sexuality, confront the reality of ageing, wank, eat a cupcake or die.
She’s just a clearly branded audio-visual delivery vehicle for a familiar vibe and, when Jones herself is dead and gone, her “poems” can be fed into the AI’s infinite reproduction machine to be regenerated and resung for ever and ever and ever …… depending on the terms in the commercial music contract which Jones just signed, on behalf of her creation, for $3m – after Xania’s songs hit 17 million streams in two months, started charting on Billboard and resulted in a bidding war.With the rapid adoption of AI into the process of culture-making, the sudden commercial viability of Xania and products like her are restarting conversations about the intersection of capitalism, creativity and opportunity that are as awkward as they are ancient.Awkward because, for all the romanticisation of human artistry, AI creatures don’t exist because a secretive cabal of aspirational robot overlords have forced them into lives.Xania exists because Telisha “Nikki” Jones is a creative entrepreneur who saw a market opportunity and 17 million freakin’ people turned up to download it.“Is this the future of music?” asked Forbes magazine of the Jones deal – but, more pertinently, it’s the present and the past.
The “familiar vibe” of recorded music loops and samples were used by commercial producers long before Apple started making them available on home computer desktop apps more than 20 years ago.One wonders what Beethoven would have made of the tech, given he borrowed ideas from Mozart … who borrowed from Bach … who adapted themes from Vivaldi.If you’re concerned the face fronting the tune is not the person who wrote the song, I’ve got some terrible news for you about Whitney Houston, Céline Dion, Britney Spears, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.Entertainment has ever been the art of reference and illusion… which is why artists’ concerns swirl around AI’s capacity not to replace their creativity but as a potential channel for their exploitation.Any technofearful Redditor still persuaded by the myth of individual creative genius needs to familiarise themselves with words like “editor”, “dramaturg”, “amanuensis”, “arranger”, “fabricator”, “director”, “studio assistant” and “producer”.
It takes a lot of folks to make one artist – not even David Bowie ran his show alone.And while Xania Monet may indeed be as immortal and unchanging as systems of digital storage and electronic retrieval allow, her appeal is as limited as the cultural moment she represents.As contexts shift, so does generational taste.Just ask the castrati – the high-voiced boy singers displaced when Enlightenment liberalism restored female performers to the stage.So while a disembodied robot pop star may be novelty now, young people are maturing with a scorn for the sameyness of the digital products that saturate the mainstream cultural experience, denouncing the ubiquitous AI slop as “clankers”, with the same disdain of the young people who once chose the Beatles over Dean Martin, then the Beastie Boys over Led Zep.
As other countries join Australia and Denmark in restricting young people’s access to social media, that realm of generational experience will have even clearer cultural demarcations,As rumours of a return to analogue fun continue to spread, so it is likely that tastes inspired by in-person gatherings around music and art, the consumption of printed materials and the spectacle of, uh, slide nights and maybe even theatre (God help us) will grow,I congratulate Monet/Jones on realising their moment,The only future music makers can be guaranteed is that the times will have their own favourite sound … and that the kids who come after will borrow the bits that they like, and move on,Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist
Overseas-trained doctors leaving the UK in record numbers
Record numbers of overseas-trained doctors are quitting the UK, leaving the NHS at risk of huge gaps in its workforce, with hostility towards migrants blamed for the exodus.In all, 4,880 doctors who qualified in another country left the UK during 2024 – a rise of 26% on the 3,869 who did so the year before – figures from the General Medical Council reveal.NHS leaders, senior doctors and the GMC warned that the increased denigration of and abuse directed at migrants in the UK was a significant reason for the rise in foreign medics leaving.“It’s really worrying that so many highly skilled and highly valued international doctors the NHS just can’t afford to lose are leaving in their droves,” said Daniel Elkeles, the chief executive of the hospitals group NHS Providers.“We wouldn’t have an NHS if we hadn’t for many years recruited talented and valued people from all around the world
Prozac ‘no better than placebo’ for treating children with depression, experts say
Clinical guidelines should no longer recommend Prozac for children, according to experts, after research showed it had no clinical benefit for treating depression in children and adolescents.Globally one in seven 10- to 19-year-olds have a mental health condition, according to the World Health Organization. In the UK, about a quarter of older teenagers and up to a fifth of younger children have anxiety, depression or other mental health problems.In the UK, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) guidance says under-18s with moderate to severe depression can be prescribed antidepressants alongside therapy.But a new review of trial data by academics in Austria and the UK concluded that fluoxetine, sold under the brand name of Prozac among others, is clinically no better than placebo drugs in treating depression in children, and should therefore no longer be prescribed to them
Councils in north of England and Midlands to get more funding in shake-up
Deprived towns and cities in the Midlands and the north of England are the big winners in a shake-up of local authority funding that will redirect cash from affluent rural areas to urban councils hit hardest by austerity.Ministers said the changes put in place a fairer system that recognised the extra needs and weaker council tax-raising powers of councils in so-called “left behind” areas. It guarantees them real-terms funding increases for the next three years.“People living in the places that suffered most from austerity will finally see their areas turned around,” the local government minister, Alison McGovern, said in a parliamentary statement.The changes, which will be introduced from April, before critical local elections in May, could see funding boosts for Reform-led councils in the north with high levels of deprivation, such as Durham and Lancashire, as well as in Kent, Reform’s flagship council
Keeping youths in care out of trouble | Letter
Diverting young people in care from the youth justice system and the associated criminalisation may help their future careers (Children in care who lash out may no longer face automatic arrest under UK review, 17 November). However, international research studies have shown that reducing the chances of young people being involved in crime to begin with are more effective.These include: stable family foster care placements; doing well at school; extending foster care placements beyond 18 years of age; having positive birth family, extended family, partner and social relationships; being settled in accommodation on leaving care; and being supported by leaving-care teams providing personal, careers, housing and financial support.For too many young people these opportunities are lacking or inconsistent, even in the face of substantial evidence detailing their unnecessary involvement in the criminal justice system, very poor outcomes and the associated costs to young people and society – see In Care, Out of Trouble, the report of Lord Laming’s review, published by the Prison Reform Trust in 2016.Prof Mike SteinUniversity of York Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section
How prohibition-based policies caused a cannabis problem | Letters
Your article correctly raised concerns about the harms of higher-strength cannabis on people vulnerable to psychosis (‘I’d run down the road thinking I was God’: a day at the cannabis psychosis clinic, 16 November). However, it didn’t explain how previous prohibition‑based policies designed to reduce cannabis use have driven up the strength of street cannabis, the source of most cannabis for people with psychosis, thus making the problem worse.Furthermore, growing data from the Drug Science T21 project and other prescription databases globally shows that medical cannabis can alleviate a range of psychiatric and neurological disorders, without inducing psychosis. Any suggestion that rates of cannabis-related psychosis could be reduced by limiting medical cannabis access is flawed and is likely to harm patients currently benefiting from it.Prof D Nutt and Prof Ilana CromeDrug Science Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section
Musical comfort at the end of your life | Brief letters
Readers who were moved by the article on Kate Munger’s Threshold Choirs (‘It was the last time Mum smiled at me’: the choirs singing to the dying in three-part harmony, 17 November) may like to know that similarly, in the UK, Companion Voices sings for people at the end of life, creating a gentle supportive soundscape. Founded by Judith Silver 12 years ago, more than a dozen groups now offer this voluntary service across England, with more planned.Kay AshtonWallingford, Oxfordshire John Crace’s analysis of Keir Starmer’s hapless, hopeless Labour government (‘I thought the grownups were back in charge!’: John Crace on how Labour shattered his expectations, 19 November) was, as usual, witty and shrewd – apart from his observation that the government’s right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Actually, it’s worse than that: the right hand doesn’t even know what the right hand is doing.Prof Chris WalshHawarden, Flintshire Zoe Williams’ reflection on the naming of storms (I keep trying to name storms
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