Those proclaiming that the benefits of Artificial Intelligence will outweigh the costs and risks continue to lose that public relations battle when it comes to music. As major labels go from suing massive music AI firms like Sumo to partnering with them—and human creators continue to get squeezed—the proprietors of AI continue to hijack the official accounts of beloved music legends to distribute AI-generated music in an attempt to deceive the public.
Meanwhile, streaming companies sit asleep at the switch.
The latest victim of this activity is the legendary, 7-time Grammy-winning bluegrass, folk, and country legend Doc Watson, as well as pioneering bluegrass group The Dillards. They both released new albums on December 10th. The only problem is, Doc Watson has been dead since 2012, and The Dillards have never sounded like dated Y2K Muzac country.
A 10-song album currently live on streaming services called Roses Never Came is copyrighted to Doc Watson, with all the tracks marked as written, produced and performed by Watson, with a clearly AI-generated album cover, and AI-generated music. With the way Sumo and other companies can take a simple prompt and turn it into a completed song within seconds, it makes these deceptions easy. But how these fraudsters are then able to hijack the official accounts of these performers across DSPs to distribute this music is the most worrisome element to this trend.
It’s the same story for The Dillards album Roses Never Came and its fifteen tracks. It’s supposedly copyrighted to The Dillards, with all credits going to The Dillards. But of course, this isn’t Dillards music, despite being on the band’s official streaming accounts.
The situation is very similar to what happened with Don Williams in early November when a fake album attributed to him populated on streaming services in an unprecedented and aggressive encroachment of the AI scourge. Despite reporting and fans calling for the music to be taken down, it took many days for the fake title to disappear.
It’s unlikely Don Williams, Doc Watson and The Dillards are the only victims of this latest trend in AI fraud, though alarmingly, country and roots music has become the unlikely epicenter of AI concerns, with multiple AI songs charting on Billboard, and fake AI artists targeting the format over EDM, hip-hop, pop, and more electronically-based music. With the latest versions of AI-generating music programs, the electronic nature of the music is becoming virtually indiscernible.
Heading into 2026, the threats on human creators are going from worrisome to immediately existential, with not just the present and future in peril, but past greats in music becoming posthumous victims of the rise of AI.
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source savingcountrymusic.com ’
