When the “Gentle Giant” Don Williams died on September 8th, 2017 at the age of 78, it left an abnormally large crater in the hearts of country music fans, and in the heart of the country music community. A country legend by anyone’s measure, the reason the passing of Don Williams affected us so deeply was due to how it was often the music of Don Williams that you turn to when you need to be consoled, including at times of the death of friends, loved ones, and other country legends.

The reverence with which country fans carry the works and legacy of Don Williams in their hearts is one of the reasons the blatant theft of his identity, and the use of his name to publish fake, AI-generated songs feels like such an egregious offense. That’s exactly what happened on November 1st when an entire album of supposed Don Williams songs was published on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube and other streaming services under the name God and the Horses.

At first, fans of Don Williams felt like a gift had fallen from heaven in the form of a new 12-song album from the Country Music Hall of Famer. Maybe it was an archival release of recently-unearthed recordings. But of course, that is not the case at all. The clearly AI-generated cover, the way all the songs all start off with the same exact sequence of notes, and the fact that the copyright is attributed to someone named “GARY WAYNE MOORE” is a dead giveaway that this is all entirely fake.

The music is still up on all the streaming services as of this post, though hopefully it will be taken down soon. But in many respects, the damage is already done. This is just a harbinger of things to come as the proliferation of AI makes it so easy to compose an album like this in minutes, and have it uploaded to steaming services since the guardrails and gatekeepers are removed, and the entire process of releasing music has becomes automated.

What makes this especially egregious is how these AI imposters were able to release this fake album under the official Don Williams accounts on these streaming services.

The other pernicious issue with all of this is the distrust this activity sows throughout the public when it comes to everything. When Shooter Jennings recently released an album of archived songs from his father Waylon Jennings called Songbird, comments sections filled with people claiming it must be AI, and not actual, real recordings.

Music legends and deceased artists unfortunately are going to become the biggest victims of this activity since they’re not around to help police it. And it’s often older fans who might fall victim to believing these AI-generated songs, albums, and artists are real.

This fake Don Williams album shouldn’t just be pulled down. Streaming services should have to answer as to why music that used someone’s stolen identity was allowed to stay up for going on two days and counting. If “Gary Wayne Moore” is a real person and was truly the individual who created and uploaded it, they should be prosecuted. The FBI or some other organization should definitely investigate this brazen, unprecedented incident.

But there’s also the possibility that all of this is generated automatically through AI practices, and someone can simply enter the names of country legends in a prompt, and spit out completed albums, automatically uploaded to DSPs, and start generating income with little if any human interaction except cashing the checks.

Meanwhile, you have real, actual independent music artists like Cam Pierce, the Piedmont Boys, Slackeye Slim, Grayson Jenkins, Anna Wescoat and more having their albums pulled off of streaming services due to bogus claims of AI-generated streaming fraud.

Don Williams definitely isn’t the first, and he most definitely will not be the last music legend to fall victim to fake AI music. This problem promises to only get worse, not better over time.

With all the promises AI has made and failed to deliver on, it’s fraudulent activity and scams, and useless AI slop that seems to be flooding the marketplace, while undermining public trust in everything since reality can now be so easily faked.