The moment is the latest example of how generative AI is upending the music industry.
The moment is the latest example of how generative AI is upending the music industry.
LOS ANGELES When an AI-generated country song called “Walk My Walk” hit No. 1 on Billboard’s country digital song sales chart this month, it was credited to a fictional artist named Breaking Rust — a white, digitally generated avatar that didn’t exist two months ago.
But the song’s vocal phrasing, melodic shape and stylistic DNA came from someone who does exist: Grammy-nominated country artist Blanco Brown, a Black music artist who has worked with Britney Spears, Childish Gambino and Rihanna.
And he had no idea.
“I didn’t even know about the song until people hit me up about it,” said Brown, whose 2019 country rap hit “The Git Up” helped usher in a new, hybrid era of country crossover. He didn’t learn about the chart-topping AI track until his phone was flooded with messages from friends.
“My phone just kept blowing up,” he said. “Somebody said: ‘Man, somebody done typed your name in the AI and made a white version of you. They just used the Blanco, not the Brown.”
The moment is the latest example of how generative AI is upending the music industry, giving anyone the ability to instantly create seemingly new songs by typing prompts into a chat window, often using models trained on real artists’ voices and styles without their knowledge.Who is behind the AI-generated country song?
The credits for the grit-filled, chant-heavy track “Walk My Walk” list Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor as one of the song’s creators, with streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify identifying him as both the songwriter and producer. In recent months, Taylor has also been credited on streaming platforms as the songwriter and producer behind Defbeatsai — one of several X-rated, AI-generated country artists that exploded across social media last year.
The Defbeatsai ecosystem, however, connects back to another figure in Brown’s past: Abraham Abushmais, a collaborator Brown once jokingly called “Abe Einstein” for his sharp studio instincts. Abushmais co-wrote a couple of songs on Brown’s 2019 album “Honeysuckle & Lightning Bugs” and is listed as the developer of Echo, an obscure AI-powered music generator app promoted on one of Defbeats.ai’s Instagram pages with a link encouraging users to “make your own hit country song.”
Brown said he wasn’t notified about their involvement in the AI hit, and the collaborator he once mentored has since become unreachable.
