An AI-generated country song titled “Walk My Walk” reached No. 1 on Billboard's country digital song sales chart this month, credited to a fictional white artist named Breaking Rust. The track's vocal style was modelled on Grammy-nominated Black country artist Blanco Brown, who said he was unaware of the song until friends alerted him.
Brown, known for his 2019 hit “The Git Up,” expressed shock at the AI creation. “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 credits list Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor as a creator, with ties to Abraham Abushmais, a former collaborator of Brown who co-wrote songs on his 2019 album and is linked to an AI music generator app.
The digital avatar fronting the song is a white AI-generated country singer built with a vocal approach modelled on Brown's sound. “It’s a white AI man with a Black voice,” Brown said. “And he’s singing like a Negro spiritual.” In response, Brown recorded his own cover of the song and plans to release a reworked derivative with new lyrics and arrangement.
Brown's management said his response challenges the legal and ethical void surrounding AI-generated music. “If someone is going to sing like me, it should be me,” he said. The incident highlights how generative AI is disrupting the music industry, with major labels suing AI song generators like Suno and Udio for training on copyrighted recordings without permission.
Josh Antonuccio, director of the Ohio University Music Industry Summit, noted that AI has democratised music creation but left creators uncompensated. “These companies trained their platforms on a volume of recorded music without permission,” he said. Some labels have shifted to licensing agreements, such as Universal Music Group's recent settlement with Udio.
