NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – History was made this week after an artificial intelligence-generated song reached the top of a Billboard music chart.
“Walk My Walk” by Breaking Rust clinched the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales ranking. It has led to mixed reactions from local artists and industry experts.
“I feel it for all of us artists that put our stories, our pain, our struggles, in our music, and you see somebody that’s not even real get this high accolades. It’s discouraging, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, it is discouraging,” country music artist 2LiveBre said.
The song has gotten more than three million streams on Spotify in less than a month.
Industry experts say AI has been used for years to help write songs. It’s a tool country music reporter Marcus K Dowling expects to stick around.
Walk My Walk by Breaking Rust topped the Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart this week.
“You cannot stop technology, technology is undefeated so we’ve been thinking that, and thinking of something that middle ground that reflection, positivity and understanding how you get within and without technology is important to consider it,” Dowling said.
Billboard says at least six AI artists have debuted on various Billboard rankings in the last few months.
Tennessee was the first state in the nation to address the impacts of artificial intelligence on the music industry.
In march of 2024, Gov. Bill Lee signed the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, called the EVLIS Act, into law. His office said the bill that would expand the Tennessee Protection of Personal Rights Law to include protections for musicians against the misuse of AI.
It came as artists were threatened by artificial intelligence that was using their image and voice without their permission.
“While Tennessee’s existing law protects name, image and likeness, it doesn’t specifically address new, personalized generative AI cloning models and services that enable human impersonation and allow users to make unauthorized fake works in the image and voice of others,” the governor said at the time.
The law protects against the unauthorized use of someone’s likeness by including voice protections for the first time. It was endorsed by leaders at the Recording Academy and the Nashville Songwriters Association International.
On the national level, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn helped introduce a bi-partisan bill this summer that would allow copyright holders to know when and how their work is being used to train generative AI models.