I’m increasingly using AI to do basic historical research and quick fact-checking, always careful to check the sources it cites in scraping the history of human knowledge acquisition. In doing so, I’ve also researched enough about AI itself to become increasingly aware of the awesome power it has as a force for both good and evil. And depending on which side of that ledger you tend to gravitate toward, you can find abundant support for your position of elation or alarm.
Recently, a Facebook friend posted a song by what looked to be a well-seasoned but heretofore unknown soul/blues singer named Jada Monroe, who hearkened back a generation or so to the emotional and vocal depth of the great female singers from the past mid-century—Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Betty Carter.
In a real song written and sung by a real songwriter, that scraping, burrowing and borrowing is done by a living, breathing person struggling to reconcile strengths and weaknesses, personal history and history at large…
The song, “Keep Going,” serves as a kind of oasis, a balm for the soul of a fractured world, resounding in its message to both face that world as it is, no turning away, and to keep hope alive by resolving to follow its title message, to carry on with our burdens, fearless and enduring.
It’s a powerful piece of work that I thought about using as a new “Brilliant Songs” entry, mostly on the basis of its performance and interpretation, rather than lyrical brilliance. I was enchanted, and I trust you’ll see why here…
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Soon as that listen was up, I did what every right-thinking music fan does: poked around seeking to answer the questions, Who is this person? What other songs has she sung? Why have I never heard of her till now?
Taking those questions in order after a fair amount of wandering through blind or subtly misdirecting byways of the Internet, I finally found the answers:
• There is no person named Jada Monroe (at least not one who sings “Keep Going”).
• This non-person named “Jada” has “sung” nine other tracks on her recently released “Soul Blues Collection,” all one hour and twenty-eight minutes of it available on You Tube, Instagram, and all the usual streaming services.
• I had never heard of “Jada Monroe” before because she was “born” as a completely AI-generated voice, persona and ostensible body on April 29, 2026. Within days, “Keep Going” was appearing on various charts that cite the most frequently downloaded songs in the music world, largely the result of social media going all a-gaga over how acutely its message and delivery was needed and appreciated in this downtrodden age.
Scratching around a bit more, I found that the purported “songwriter,” “producer” and “engineer” for all things “Jada Monroe” goes by the name of Nicole Moseros, who also, mystery of mysteries, has almost zero Internet presence. Mere pseudonym or an AI creation herself, AI spawning more AI? The mind reels…
“Moseros” does, however, perform the same functions for one “Cole Morris,” another apparent AI persona (his “photo” to the right), who inhabits the country music genre with a small catalog but who, like Monroe, has zero concert news or live clips of “his” songs, whose titles include “Whose Life Is This?” and “The Ones We’ve Left on the Road.”
So, let’s lend an ear now to how Ms. “Meseros” frames the phenomenon of Jada Monroe on Jada’s official website.
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The music doesn’t rush. It doesn’t push toward a happy ending. It sits with you the way a real friend would.
Built by One Person. On Purpose.
Jada is a soul blues project created, written, and directed by N. Moseros. Every lyric, every melody, every story, every visual, and every creative choice behind this project comes from one person. Nothing is accidental.
Music production and visual content are created with the assistance of AI tools. But the heart of this project is human. Every word is written by hand. Every story is chosen on purpose. Every creative decision is made by someone who cares deeply about getting it right.
Built in silence. For the ones still living in it.
This project is for the women who endured when no one was watching. The ones who kept going when nobody thanked them. The ones who are still here, still standing, still deciding what comes next.
You are not invisible. And you were never alone.
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Unintentional ironies abound through that text, which we have no reason to think wasn’t also written by AI.
Chief among them: “You are not invisible.” (Even though the singer and songwriter are.)
(The music) “sits with you the way a real friend would.” (If the friend were, unlike the music makers, real.)
“Every word is written by hand.” (Sorry, I burst out laughing at that.)
After writing last week’s post on River Whyless’s cover version of “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” I conducted another AI experiment to see what the Claude platform would do “in the voice of andrewhidas.com” with the same prompts I was myself operating on in writing the post. Claude took some 10 seconds or so to crank out 1,200 words on the cover version compared to the Dylan original and another by the Johnny Cash-June Carter duo.
It was a creditable enough treatment that might have passed muster with some readers, but unlike a similar experiment I did last year on a W.H. Auden poem analysis using ChapGPT, it didn’t appeal to me in the least. It was too refined, too spit-polished, like an overly mannered creative writing class essay by which the writer was hoping to gain the professor’s approval for admittance to a graduate writer’s program.
Ultimately, it just wasn’t me, and it took off in directions I wouldn’t have gone then, next week, or the next hundred years.
Because that’s the thing: “real” still matters. (Or else we are cooked, my friends.)
There is no “real friend” anywhere close to “Keep Going.” THAT IS NOT A SINGER, AND THERE IS NO SONGWRITER!
It’s all stolen and scraped, burrowed and borrowed by a machine, from thousands, maybe millions of songs that have been written and sung before.
In a real song written and sung by a real songwriter, that scraping, burrowing and borrowing is done by a living, breathing person struggling to reconcile strengths and weaknesses, personal history and history at large, moods of the moment and sensibilities of their entire lives. From those struggles, these actual persons generate something unique in time, from that moment in their own lives, their own interactions with their muse, their loves, their longings and biases, fears, inspirations and vulnerabilities.
In the act of creation, they watch themselves having “written every word by hand,” rather than having it generated by a computer program in seconds and foisted upon an unsuspecting audience as something by somebody who “sits with you the way a real friend would,”
No, no, no, no, no. No one is sitting there “the way a real friend would.”
“Jada Monroe” is not a friend of yours or anyone’s.
Good God!
Until, that is, AI progresses enough to enflesh a computer-generated, 3-D printed Jada, invent a personal history for her in a fine novelist’s voice, have her actual computer-embodied self appear in concert smiling at you, sweating from her brow, appearing for all the world to be a real human being.
Given the dizzying pace of technological change, how far off can that world be?
Far enough for me not to be here, I most fervently hope; this I know.
In the meantime: Good-bye, Jada. Not good to have known you, Cole.
And yes, I used AI to better ascertain whether the aforementioned songs and singers were AI. Remember the phrase in the first paragraph above: “…for good or evil?”
Still true.
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The real deal…
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For brief previews of all songs in this series, most recent first, see https://andrewhidas.com/?s=Brilliant+songs
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Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing.
Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for library books) grace the rotating banner top of homepage. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/
Library books by Larry Rose, Redlands, California, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com
AI bot by Andrea De Santis, Oxford, England https://unsplash.com/@santesson89
“Cole Morris” from Instagram
The Jada Monroe songs are amazing, with exquisite sensibility. By far the best AI renderings I’ve heard so far. Do you know if the other “musicians” are also AI? If so, they are likewise exquisite! I found myself wondering if Clapton had somehow been coaxed into taking part. At several points throughout, there were moments that moistened my eyes and brought chills of satisfaction. Thank you!
OMFG! More awful than I can imagine…heavy sigh…my heart and soul ache for the genuine kinship to my feeling, expressing brethren. How blessed we are to have those works of exquisite fellow travelers to keep us connected.
Moral and ethical guidelines are so necessary in offering actual entities,…unless you are giving these others a SS# and tax ID. Or, is this entity SO advanced it now has equality with Homo Sapiens
Maybe a future reality?
Sci-fi crossing Nature’s boundary is a nebulous zone. And here we are. I wonder what Baba Ram Das or Terrence McKenna would say?
AH, all this work, the song the comments from Cole, feel so derivative–which of course they are. Where are surprises and the quirks? Is AI trying to bore us to death?
Drew I cannot believe what I’m reading! I just saw and heard Jada Monroe sing “Keep Going” on a Facebook post. I loved “her” song so much I went to Spotify and was delighted to see that she had so many other songs. I did wonder why I hadn’t heard of her. Will we ever know truth again now that we live in an AI world?
Some more thoughts: When you look on Spotify it’s wild. Her songs and photos pull at your heart strings. I was going to put that song on my list of favorites. It spoke to me.
I don’t get the technology of AI but I guess the good thing is that someone can create something beautiful and inspiring. I loved that she was a beautiful black woman elder, and thus I was drawn to her.
I’m not sure what to do now that I know she’s fake. I could consider her a work of art and allow myself the experience. Music beckons me….
David, I initially had much the same reaction as you, and I was intrigued enough to want to know more. But discovering she’s AI really threw me for a loop, and I realized I was feeling like a jilted lover in a relationship built on a lie. Helluva con job, though—you’re right, it’s the best AI music out there. And yes, from what I could glean from the website, all the music is AI, no Clapton or ghost of Wes Montgomery!
I know, Marianne! Big, big questions for our society to ponder, and I’m not at all sure we’re ready for it. Once again, technology races far ahead of consciousness. So far, we’ve avoided nuking ourselves into oblivion via the split atom, but will we survive AI? Better stay tuned, though in truth, it is the next generation or two who will be grappling with this most mightily.
Great questions, Joan. I’m picturing Planet AI where everyone’s happy, courteous and understanding 24/7—kind of like depictions of heaven, which have always left me unimpressed. So then would the answer be programmed occasional grumpiness & irrationality from your otherwise perfect mate?
Dawn, it’s a big ol’ can of worms, isn’t it? Like you, I got rollercoastered up to the joy of discovering a new artist and song, and then the terrible downhill of realization it was all fake, and she doesn’t even exist. But the song does—sorta, and sorta not. But yes, if we look at it from a pure artistic frame; pleasing sounds engendering pleasing, heart-moving feelings, however disembodied the creation of it was—could we come to rest with that? Problem is, I’m not sure I want to! I think the problem is I feel suckered. So it occurs to me: there has been a wide call in the music industry to explicitly label AI songs so that there’s no confusion and buyers/listeners can either listen or not, but at least be informed about whether it’s from humans or robots. That seems like the least we should do, even as AI brings up all manner of even more serious issues about it not only replacing human music, but humans themselves. And I think I’ll leave it there for now!
I like Jada Monroe’s bluesy “Keep Going” but (even if I hadn’t known it was AI generated) I love Billie Holiday’s “The Blues Are Brewin’” with a little help from her friend Stachmo. Perhaps, like you, it’s been nice knowing you, Jada, for three minutes, but let our friendship end there. My regard for the creative arts has always been and will be an expression relegated to the realm of humankind. The conundrum in this whole AI rigmarole is the inability of mere mortals to distinguish artificiality from reality. Its implications are far reaching. Is the photo real? Is there a negative? Will the darkrooms of Ansel Adams die in the darkrooms of AI? While there’s no question AI is here to stay, I hope that the Gershwins’ thing that was “here to stay” doesn’t lose its luster to AI. It’s more than a bit frightening. It could be HAL,
i’m surprised that knowing the Jada Monroe “keep going” song is AI generated has not diminished its appeal or the inspiration I feel upon listening. I no longer have a sense of what “fake” means, of if it matters (OMG, am I going MAGA here?). There are so many layers of confusion, ethics, and appropriateness to be addressed in the accelerating reach of AI. Many thanks for this post.
Thanks for this, Andrew. I learned a huge amount from your research and commentary. I’ve been basically avoiding the whole AI thing so far (or so I imagined) – but this is *music* and the truth about it is *essential.* I did (I think) know that it was machine-made, for the same (or opposite) reason I so love to go hear live music. All the buffing and polishing of studio performances move the music in one direction; but a live performance has endless variations, moments of inspiration, improvisation, fun.
In a way I liken Jada Monroe to Muzak. Soulless, anodyne. Anyway I like to think I wouldn’t have loved Jada even if your title hadn’t spilled the beans to me. In fact, I just returned from a wonderful concert tonight by an old singer songwriter named Cliff Eberhardt. He’s creaky, his back hurts, he missed a few notes here and there. But his voice is still uniquely beautiful, and his songs each have a fingerprint. I am savoring this evening even more, after looking into the AI reality.
Again, thank you!
Yes, Robert, I remember the creepiness and chill that went down everyone’s spine with those first words out of Hal. The chill represented a foreshadowing of what we could already feel was forthcoming, and man, is it ever here now…
Jay, I think anyone paying attention is learning, sometimes the hard way by utterly putting one’s foot in it, so to speak, that we have to check and double-check sources if we glean anything at all from social media. The burden has been put on us in a way no one was really anticipating the true import of in the phrase, “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspaper.” I’ve gotten pretty vigilant about never trusting a source that has an obvious political angle, but damn if I wasn’t duped by Jada Monroe, not quite realizing just how far along AI music has gotten. Lesson learned, and I’m all the better (along with slightly more cynical, dammit…) for it.
Jeanette, I couldn’t agree more that live music has it all over every other kind. It’s but one reason why I always search high and low for live versions of songs when I do a music post, settling for recorded versions only when the live version’s sound quality is dismal or there simply isn’t one. One reason I finally discovered that our friend Jada is merely a vapor is that I couldn’t find a live version. When I explored why that might be, I saw the song had only been released days earlier, so I was about to give it a pass thinking they just hadn’t gotten a live version together yet. But then I googled her upcoming concert schedule and saw nothing there, which seemed rather odd enough to activate my skeptic-cynic muscles, and the rest is the history that resulted in this post. Glad you found your way to it, and thanks very much for your comment and the Cliff Eberhardt tip, which I will happily follow up on (once I’ve ascertained for certain he’s not a cyborg….) :-)
Another aspect of this is the fact that “Jada Monroe” has a Facebook page, & I’m guessing the people making comments there don’t know she’s AI.
You’re guessing right on about 98% of the people who leave comments on Facebook, Jan. That was certainly the case when I was writing this post more than a month ago, and checking back now, it hasn’t really changed. Most commenters are over the moon about her, wanting to learn more, and wondering why they can’t find much info about her, despite a number of commenters divulging she is AI. People believe what they want to believe, and don’t read very carefully, it turns out! (Traversing readers excepted, of course…)