The writer is the FT’s pop music critic
For teachers and examiners, overuse of the word “delve” is a tell that ChatGPT has been used to draft an essay. Alarm bells ring as students repeatedly delve in to the impact of the American civil war. When I asked the AI bot about this favourite word, it responded, “I tend to say things like, ‘Let’s delve deeper into that’” to which it perkily appended a laughing emoji.
Is there an equivalent way of telling when AI has been used to make a song? The latest candidate for this challenge is a country track entitled “Walk My Walk”, currently topping Billboard’s country digital song sales chart in the US. The singer seems to be a stubbled fellow called Breaking Rust. He stares moodily from his Spotify artist page in a Stetson, looking a bit like David Beckham in an aftershave ad.