AI Pledge

AI music has a real problem that platforms have been quiet about: every AI stream takes money out of the same payout pool that human artists are paid from. We are not going to do that here.

XECHO's commitment, in one sentence: AI activity on this platform cannot dilute a human artist's streaming income — and the math is verifiable on-chain.

1. Separate Revenue Pools

Human-artist streaming and AI-generated streaming are paid from different pools, at different on-chain contract addresses. An AI stream pays AI creators (and any opt-in artists in its training set). It does not subtract a cent from the human streaming pool.

The Human Pool is funded by base subscriptions, downloads, tips, and wave purchases — exactly as it is today. The AI Pool is funded only by:

• AI tier subscription revenue — a separate, optional listener tier (not the base subscription)
• Per-generation fees paid by AI creators when they create an AI track
• Per-distribution fees paid when an AI track goes public
• Tips and direct-pay on AI tracks, routed to the AI Pool, not the human Treasury

A listener on the base subscription who happens to play an AI track still pays 100% of their subscription fee into the Human Pool. AI listening does not redirect their dollars. The AI track was already paid for at generation time, and stream payouts to the AI creator come from AI tier revenue and AI-specific fees that never touch the human side.

This is the core complaint working artists have made about every other streaming service: AI tracks are mathematically taking food off their tables, today, in pools they never agreed to share. We answer that head-on with structural separation — published, on-chain, and verifiable on /transparency.

2. Human-First Discovery

AI-generated tracks live on a separate discovery surface. They do not compete with human artists in core feeds, autoplay, daily mixes, mood playlists, or editorial placement. Listeners who want AI music opt into it deliberately.

AI personas are not eligible for verified-artist status. AI tracks cannot be uploaded under a human artist's profile, ever.

3. Consent Before Training

We do not train AI models on copyrighted music we have not licensed. Every model available on XECHO is built from one of:

• Production music libraries we have licensed in writing
• Public-domain catalog
• A creator's own uploaded catalog, where they have warranted ownership
• An opt-in training pool with a posted revenue-share formula

Opt-in means opt-in. We do not auto-enroll uploads. We do not bury consent in a terms-of-service update. Joining the training pool is a deliberate, revocable action taken in your creator dashboard.

4. No Unauthorized Voice Clones

A voice or likeness model of any artist can only be created with that artist's explicit, written consent. They set the price. They approve each use. They can revoke access at any time, with payouts already earned honored.

5. Disclosure on Every AI Output

Every AI-generated or AI-assisted track on XECHO ships with:

• C2PA Content Credentials embedded in the file — cryptographically signed authorship and AI-involvement manifest
• DDEX AI metadata flags in the standard music industry feed
• Inaudible watermarking so AI provenance survives re-encoding
• A clear "AI-generated" or "AI-assisted" badge anywhere the track is presented to a listener

No hidden AI. No fake bands with photo-AI press shots posing as human acts. If it was made with AI, it says so — on the file, in the metadata, on the page.

5.1 The three classifications (binding under the Creator Agreement)

Every track, audiobook, Wave, and other Creator Content is classified as exactly one of three values in the ai_disclosure field at upload. This selection is recorded with the Content and is contractually binding.

• Human — Content created without material involvement of a generative AI model. Use of conventional production tools (DAW, plugins, AI-assisted mixing utilities, AI-assisted stem separation, traditional MIDI quantization, autotune) does not, by itself, render Content non-Human. What matters is whether the principal creative work was performed by a human author or by an AI model.
• AI-Assisted — A human is the principal creative author, but a generative AI model contributed substantially as a tool (e.g. AI-suggested chord progressions adopted with significant revision; AI-generated melodic ideas selected and edited by the human author; AI-generated lyric drafts heavily revised). The output reflects the human author’s creative judgment as the primary force.
• AI-Generated — The principal creative output was generated by an AI model and the human contribution is curatorial or directorial (prompt selection, model selection, post-processing, mixing of generated stems). Includes tracks fully composed by Suno, Udio, MusicGen, Stable Audio, or comparable text-to-music models; AI-generated vocal tracks using voice-cloning or text-to-speech models; mostly-AI tracks with light human editing.

The threshold between AI-Assisted and AI-Generated is a good-faith judgment by the Creator. Where the AI’s contribution exceeds what a human author could in good conscience claim authorship over, the correct classification is AI-Generated. False classification of AI status is a material breach of the Creator Agreement and grounds for immediate Content removal, royalty forfeiture, and Account termination.

5.2 Voice cloning and digital replicas — consent regime

Use of an AI model that replicates an identifiable person’s voice or likeness requires a signed, dated, and currently-valid release from the person whose voice or likeness is replicated, AI-Generated classification on the Content, and (where the use is sale-of-Wave) a per-use voice license arrangement administered through the XECHO Voice License contract. Voice cloning of public figures without explicit, current consent is prohibited regardless of jurisdiction. Statutory consequences include the Tennessee ELVIS Act (Tenn. Code § 47-25-1101 et seq.), California Civil Code § 3344 (right of publicity), California AB 2602 (digital replicas in performances), and California AB 1836 (post-mortem digital replicas), in addition to platform consequences.

5.3 Statutory and case-law alignment

This disclosure regime is aligned with:

• U.S. copyright — human-authorship requirement. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) requires human authorship for copyright; Thaler v. Perlmutter, 689 F. Supp. 3d 1 (D.D.C. 2023), held that purely AI-generated works are not eligible for U.S. copyright registration. We do not represent that AI-Generated Content is copyrightable, and Creators of AI-Generated Content should understand the limited scope of any enforceable rights they hold in such Content.
• U.S. Copyright Office 2023 guidance on AI-assisted works applies to AI-Assisted Content with substantial human authorial contribution; the human portions may be registrable while purely-AI elements are disclaimed.
• EU AI Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689. Article 50 (transparency for AI interaction and AI-generated content) and Article 5 (prohibited practices) apply. The disclosure tools, badges, and AI-routed surfaces of XECHO meet the Article 50 transparency obligations effective 2026-08-02.
• Colorado AI Act, SB24-205 (effective 2026-02-01). XECHO is a Colorado entity; the impact-assessment, notice, and consumer-rights obligations of that statute apply to any feature meeting the “high-risk” threshold.

5.4 Detection + publish-gate enforcement (technical)

Disclosure is enforced both contractually and technically. Every uploaded track is run through XECHO’s AI-detection model, which records a 0–100 score along with the engine version. Where the model flags Content as AI-generated but the Creator’s disclosure is Human, the publish-gate trigger flags the track for review and notifies the Creator by email. The Creator may update the disclosure (in which case the flag clears and the track publishes per the updated disclosure) or maintain the Human disclosure and submit a dispute through the Creator dashboard for human review.

6. Verifiable Payouts — The Math

XECHO runs payouts through on-chain contracts. The rules above are not promises — they are inspectable. Here is exactly how every dollar in the AI Pool is split:

• 2% reserve off the top — funds refunds, dispute resolution, and EU AI Act / NO FAKES compliance costs
• 15% platform fee on the remainder — hard-capped on-chain at 25% maximum
• 70% AI creator share of the remainder after the platform fee — paid to the user who generated the AI track
• 30% training pool share of the remainder after the platform fee — split across opt-in training contributors per the immutable attribution vector recorded at generation time

Voice-license royalties are not taken from any of the above. They are paid directly to the licensing artist at generation time through a separate contract — the artist's wallet receives the payment before the AI track is allowed to publish. Default platform fee on voice-license payments is 5%, hard-capped on-chain at 10%, so the licensing artist's take is structurally guaranteed to be at least 90%.

Live state of both pools — balances, splits, all-time inflow, the dilution-zero counter — is published on /transparency. If we ever violate this commitment, the receipts will show it before we could explain it away.

7. What We Will Not Build

The following are not on our roadmap, and will not be — at any price:

• Generative models trained on scraped, unlicensed copyrighted music
• Voice clones of artists who have not opted in
• AI tracks placed under a human artist's name or profile
• AI-seeded mood/focus playlists where listeners cannot tell the difference
• Algorithmic discovery that prefers AI tracks because they are cheaper to produce
• Any feature whose business case requires diluting human artist payouts

8. How to Opt Out

Every creator on XECHO can, at any time:

• Refuse to enroll any track in the AI training pool (the default state)
• Withdraw previously enrolled tracks — future AI generations will no longer use them
• Set an explicit Do Not Train flag broadcast in DDEX metadata to other platforms
• Decline to make a voice or style license available, with no penalty to discovery, payouts, or platform standing

Opting out of AI features does not deprioritize you anywhere on the platform. We do not punish artists for being human.

9. Hold Us To It

This pledge is the standard we are asking working artists to judge us by. If we ship something that breaks it, we want to hear about it loudly and publicly.

This pledge will evolve as the legal landscape, technical standards (C2PA, DDEX, watermarking), and artist consensus evolve. Material changes will be announced before they take effect, not after.