Last November, "Walk My Walk," credited to an act called Breaking Rust, spent a second week at No. 1 on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart. Billboard counted it among "AI-assisted artists." The money was modest: Luminate data showed it "sold more than 2,000 copies in the U.S." in its tracking week. But NBC noted Billboard's count of at least one AI artist debuting in each of its past six chart weeks. NBC News put it this way: "everything about Breaking Rust — the artist's identity, whether Breaking Rust's songs were created by artificial intelligence and whether the songs' popularity has been artificially inflated — quickly devolves into uncertainty."
I'm not here to say how that song was made. Nobody behind it has said so publicly, as far as the reporting shows. I'm here for the question every label, producer and investor should ask before paying for an AI-assisted catalog: what exactly are you buying? The devil is in the details, and in the U.S., the detail is a human.
Takeaway #1: No human, no copyright
FROM THE RULE
"The Creativity Machine cannot be the recognized author of a copyrighted work because the Copyright Act of 1976 requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being."
What it means for you. Stephen Thaler applied to register an artwork and listed his AI system as the author. He told the Copyright Office the work "was autonomously generated by an AI." The Office refused, and the D.C. Circuit affirmed. On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal. That isn't a ruling on the merits, but the D.C. Circuit's rule stands.
Notice what the court decided and what it didn't. It held the Copyright Act requires a human author. It didn't reach whether the Constitution also requires one, and it didn't decide whether Thaler himself could be the author for making and using the machine, because that argument "was waived before the agency."
So a track generated entirely by a machine, with no human authorship in it, isn't protected by U.S. copyright. Copyright wouldn't stop anyone from copying it. That's a strange thing to pay millions for. And a song has two copyrights, the composition and the sound recording, so ask the question about both.
Your move. If you're licensing or buying music, ask in writing which parts were human-written, human-performed or human-edited. That answer is the asset.
Takeaway #2: Prompts aren't enough. Editing can be
FROM THE RULE
"Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements."
What it means for you. The Office's report is the government's clearest map. Typing a prompt doesn't make you the author: "prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control to make users of an AI system the authors of the output." But it also says human authors are protected in their work "that are perceptible in AI-generated outputs," and in "the creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of material in the outputs, or creative modifications of the outputs."
In plain English: the lyric you wrote, the melody you played, the arrangement you built, the vocal you recorded and the edits you made can be yours. The machine's part isn't. And it's case by case. The Office says whether a human's contribution is enough "must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis."
The Office's 2023 registration guidance says that if a work contains "more than a de minimis amount of AI-generated material, the applicant should disclose that information." So the registration paperwork itself will ask the question. And it isn't a dead end: the Office says it "has registered hundreds of works that incorporate AI-generated material, with the registration covering the human author's contribution to the work."
That's who really owns an AI-assisted song: the humans whose work you can actually point to.
Your move. If you make music with AI tools, keep your drafts, stems, session files and lyric notes. They're your proof of authorship. If you're signing an AI-assisted act, put the disclosure duty in the contract.
Sample wording (our illustration): "Artist shall identify in Schedule C each Master that includes AI-generated material and describe the human-authored contribution to each."
And always remember, don't sign it till you read it, my friends.
General information, not legal advice. Reading this doesn't create an attorney-client relationship. Talk to a lawyer before you register, license or buy AI-assisted work.
Sources
- Billboard (Melinda Newman), 'As AI Artists Breaking Rust & Cain Walker Rule a Country Chart, Nashville Execs Weigh in', Nov 12, 2025
- NBC News (Rob Wile), 'A mysterious stranger rode into town and topped a country music chart. He might not be real.', Nov 15, 2025
- Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 23-5233 (D.C. Cir. Mar. 18, 2025)
- Supreme Court docket No. 25-449, Thaler v. Perlmutter (cert denied Mar. 2, 2026)
- U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (Jan 29, 2025)
- Music Business Worldwide (Murray Stassen), 'Two artists say AI act Breaking Rust ripped them off', Dec 4, 2025
