AI country star Breaking Rust tops Billboard chart

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Country music has a new chart-topping star, except, well, he doesn’t actually exist.

Meet Breaking Rust, the latest “artist” to hit number one on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart with a track called Walk My Walk. 

The song has racked up more than 1.6 million US streams, landed tens of thousands of Instagram followers, and inspired fans to gush about his “raspy voice” and “amazing songwriting.” 

The only problem? Breaking Rust isn’t human. 

He’s an AI-generated artist dreamed up sometime around mid-October, possibly by another AI named Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor (who’s credited as the songwriter but also might not exist).

Breaking Rust’s debut single, Livin’ on Borrowed Time, quietly climbed to number five before Walk My Walk galloped all the way to the top. (Via: Digital Trends)

On Instagram, his profile features slick, AI-generated music videos showing a rugged, denim-wearing country crooner, but nowhere does it mention that the entire thing was made by machine learning software. 

The comments section is a goldmine of confusion. 

Some fans seem fully convinced he’s real (“Love your voice!”). Others are suspicious (“I don’t know if this is a real guy…”), and a few might just be trolling (“Even his raspy voice.”)

It’s a strange and slightly unsettling milestone for the music industry. 

While struggling human artists are still grinding to get their songs heard, a digital cowboy built from algorithms just rode to number one. 

And the kicker? His success might’ve been trained on their work.

Streaming platforms like Spotify and Amazon Music are still trying to figure out how to handle this, how to label AI music, how to keep recommendation feeds human-friendly, and how to prevent an avalanche of synthetic hits from drowning out real musicians.

Breaking Rust isn’t even the first robot to take over the charts. AI R&B singer Xania Monet hit number one earlier this month. Between them and the fake band Velvet Sundown, the AI music scene is booming.