Music Legends Doc Watson, The Dillards are Latest AI Fraud Victims
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 progressive bluegrass group 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.
Formed in 1963, The Dillards are officially still around with members Rodney Dillard and Beverly Cotton-Dillard. But this is not their music.
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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December 12, 2025 @ 12:58 pm
I can already see where this particular AI trend is headed. These kinds of stories are going to become a regular occurrence, with music consumers just expecting this kind of activity, and losing their outrage over it, to the point where deceased performers who don’t have robust estates will have their streaming accounts taken over and be populated full of fake songs. The AI fraudsters will figure out how to make music that more similarly sounds like the performers. And since we can’t even agree that AI songs should be labeled as such, the public will go on to either not caring, or distrusting everything, especially catalog and posthumous releases.
It’s hard to express in words what we’re about to face in 2026.
December 12, 2025 @ 1:37 pm
Disney just sold the rights to some 200 characters to OpenAI. Soon you can make your own action drama where Donald Duck and Bambi battles Darth Vader and Doctor Doom.
It will probably be a better movie than whatever crap the studios are pushing these days.
On a positive note; one day we will be able to watch Charles Bronson beat the hell out of Leonardo DiCaprio.
December 12, 2025 @ 1:57 pm
Again, a lot of the incentive for this shit comes directly from the “pro rata” payments model where there is a single pot of money sitting there to be divided by everybody on the streaming platform. It’s easy for scammers to get in on it and there are reasons why distributors enable that.
streaming platform Deezer is supposedly rolling out an alternative to pro rata, and a bunch of anti-AI fraud policies on their platform. Supposedly it’ll be the logical thing where streams will be paid based partly on the paying subscribers’ view percentage (ie if I listen to Doc Watson 10% of my monthly streaming, some percentage of my subscription goes to Doc’s rightsholders). Not sure how they’re handling free/ad-paid users, but it’s a system that makes so much more sense than the pro rata bullshit which seems designed for bot farms to abuse.
I’m sure scammers will figure out something else to get around that, but right now a VAST amount of fraud on streaming is related to this one piece of the Spotify-pioneered architecture that all of the streaming platforms currently use.
December 12, 2025 @ 2:52 pm
Is Deezer’s proposed model the same or different than Tidal? I thought Tidal had a different payment model as well, but maybe I have that confused with them supposedly paying out the most per-stream – only under the current corrupted model.
December 12, 2025 @ 4:42 pm
I have heard that tidal pays a lot better, but I haven’t been paying attention to them. I’ve been planning to start paying for a separate streaming service so I’ll definitely do some research (I’m currently using YouTube music because it allows me to queue up both studio albums and random YouTube videos and interviews and stuff like that, but I know they play poorly compared to some of the other services. I’ll do some research and come back here in a few days and post what I learn.
December 12, 2025 @ 1:51 pm
Coincidence? Can we please get the story/circumstance of the Treaty Oak Revival add at the top of this page after the takedown you did on them last week? Just curious.
December 12, 2025 @ 2:48 pm
Tell me you don’t know how 3rd-party advertising networks work without telling me you don’t know how 3rd-party advertising networks work.
December 12, 2025 @ 2:54 pm
I’ll just tell you. I have no idea how third party advertising works.
December 12, 2025 @ 3:04 pm
The advertising on Saving Country Music is programmatic, meaning that I have no control over it, aside from blocking out certain things like political or sexual advertising. If you saw a Treaty Oak Revival ad, it’s probably because they either targeted SCM for advertising, or targeted all country music websites with an ad campaign, and it came through the exchange.
December 12, 2025 @ 2:25 pm
Fraud is fraud and all involved should be punished to the full extent of the law.
Isn’t counterfitting illegal? AI is just the latest scourge on our society. And I understand they are planning to reopen nuclear plants because the amount of energy it creates to run AI is huge!
Label it AI (and to use an old record term), throw it in the cutout bin or trashcan!
December 12, 2025 @ 2:51 pm
The only hope for pushback on AI will come from States. The E.O. that the President signed last night is/was written by and for big tech. The current Administration pretty clearly is in their pocket and is not going to do anything to push back on it at a Federal level. “But what about China!?!?” will/is the default response.
Sad, but true.
December 12, 2025 @ 3:08 pm
Ironically, I completely understand why you can’t have the States individually regulate AI. If every single state had a different AI regulation, you would need 50 different versions of each AI platform, which would create a nightmare for everyone. Maybe that would be an inadvertent win since it would help scuttle the business. But really, the best thing to do is regulate AI nationally and globally, which of course we all know will not happen. So in that instance, it’s falling to the States. But now that they can’t enact regulation either, we’re all truly screwed.
December 12, 2025 @ 3:13 pm
AI is anti human in so many ways. It wants to replace human creativity with bullshit or it wants to impoverish us all by taking away all our jobs. The whole thing is just an attack on everything good in the world
December 12, 2025 @ 4:45 pm
The problem is that a lot of internet fraud is coming from abroad. For example the people calling Your grandmother to defraud her are often slaves who are enslaved by Chinese gangs operating in Malaysia or Myanmar or something like that. It’s it’s not even, like, a job in India where they have some rule of law, but something entirely worse and darker at this point . I’m sure some of this streaming fraud is similarly based elsewhere.
The people who need to be targeted are the distributors and the streaming services. They created this mess in particular.
In the meantime, support artists directly when you can!
December 12, 2025 @ 7:52 pm
There was a good case made that the foreign aid paid by USA was not money ‘wasted’ because a lot of it went to stop these kinds of operations which are siphoning billions out of USA.
(From Australia here, not being political, just adding a point to the subject of scams)
December 12, 2025 @ 4:37 pm
“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.”
Like the moveable-type printing press, the firearm and the birth control pill, this technology is here, so arguing about whether it’s good or bad can be fun over a brew, but not really relevant.
The real argument is about how we live with this tech now that it’s here.
As a software guy, I’ve got to say, I’m pretty shocked that these streaming platforms can be “hacked” so easily. I guess this comes back to one of those problems where authenticating people in meatspace is pretty difficult. Asking long-dead musicians to remember their passwords isn’t going to work. But still, if Jonathan Terrell can have whole albums pulled down for alleged fraud, surely there can be some accountability for whoever uploaded this nonsense, certainly before the checks start flowing.
December 12, 2025 @ 5:13 pm
I agree that AI is here to stay, and those who think we’re going to draw a hard line against its proliferation are setting themselves up to get trucked by the cold hard reality of what 2026 has in store. That is why the solutions I have laid out (i.e. disclosing and certifying AI vs. human generated tracks) are reasonable, executable, and can help consumers make good choices.
But let’s not hand wave away the proliferation of dead musicians having their identities stolen to make fraudsters money as an inevitability. This is illegal activity that should be completely intolerable, whether AI is here to stay, or not.
The deeper point I was trying to make with that statement is that as AI companies are trying to build out data centers, trying to stop government regulation, trying to entice investment, and trying to sell the public on the virtues of AI, stories like this are catastrophic. AI should be the first to call out these instances and mitigate them. People love and revere Don Williams and Doc Watson. Using their name and likeness in fraud is not going to help the case of selling AI to an increasingly skeptical public.
AI is going to cure Cancer? Okay, then do it. Let’s go. Or at least show some progress or explain what’s being done in that direction. Instead what it’s doing is eviscerating entry level jobs for youth, ripping off the elderly and deceased people, destroying the creative arts, and creating AI slop that isn’t good for anyone.
December 12, 2025 @ 6:53 pm
Trigger:
I agree that there is no way to stop AI from proliferating; it’s here to stay, whether we like it or not. That said, however, regulations and guardrails of are what must be put in place now so that this technology is not misused in a way that endangers people’s livelihoods, and even people’s lives. I have no ideas of what those regulations can or should like, but they need to be in place; and the people who use this technology, for whatever reason, must assume personal responsibility when things go wrong, as they invariably will.
December 12, 2025 @ 8:07 pm
100% agree all this should be regulated. But at this point, that ship has sailed as well. And my guess is the next thing the AI companies are going to do is get carve outs in the legal system so they won’t be liable when AI assists your child in committing suicide, or their interface is used to steal the identity of a dead celebrity.
December 13, 2025 @ 11:50 pm
Drugs and guns of all kinds are heavy regulated too. Yet, you can buy whatever you want, right out off the trunks.
Voices tried to warn us of AI. We ignored them. Now it’s too late.
December 15, 2025 @ 11:38 am
I agree that your request to add AI tags to song metadata is reasonable and necessary.
What has been presented as consumer-grade AI (Large Language Models, ChatGPT and such) are incapable of curing cancer and won’t do it. LLMs are not capable of abstract reasoning, which is why they commonly make errors in logic that any 5 year old can point out.
I think their ability to cost people jobs is likely overstated also. Not zilch, but overstated. It’ll probably be more like the ongoing trend to displace bookkeeping, secretarial and file clerk jobs that computers have been creating for 60 years now.
These LLMs have been consumer-grade tech for 3 or 4 years now, so it’s time for the AI companies promising deep transformation of our economy to put up or shut up. I think there are 6 or 8 factors contributing to our current economic malaise that greatly swamp any impact of AI.
None of that is to downplay the specifics of this case, which are terrible, but it seems to me that the main problem here is security/authentication: Why can just anybody upload songs to streaming platforms and claim they are Doc Watson’s?
December 13, 2025 @ 10:48 am
Sadly, I am not sure it can be stopped and think it is going to be the norm.
December 13, 2025 @ 2:37 pm
Glad I dropped Spotify and will be sticking with LPs and CDs. People will always love live music and hopefully the AI bubble bursts and takes down some of the sacks of shit. But I doubt that will happen.
December 13, 2025 @ 11:56 pm
Well, in a few years it won’t be possible to buy physical copies anymore. Books, CD’s, vinyl, BluRay’s/DVD (isn’t DVD dead by now?).
Some illegal copies from Asia, at best, but the big companies won’t bother wasting money on expensive hardware. And now that NetFlix bought WB, we can wave goodbye to the vault of clasdical movies and shows. No re-releases of 40’s noir etc. They won’t even make it available for streaming. The cost of the servers won’t justify that, economically.
December 14, 2025 @ 8:17 am
Domestic production of vinyl continues to ramp up due to continued increasing demand. Cassette tape manufacturing has also increased. CD/DVD’s continue to go down, but are not obsolete like previous eras of 8-tracks and vinyl. And on-demand printing of books have kept that industry alive for now. I agree that physical media faces headwinds, but the idea buying physical will be impossible is ridiculous. Vinyl has been leading a counterinsurgency for going on a decade.
December 14, 2025 @ 4:45 pm
Isn’t the vinyl a bit too expensive for the casual listener? Same with on-demand printing of books.
If I’m wrong regarding this matter; great, nothing is better. I will still haunt the flea markets and thrift stores for albums, books and movies to add to my ever-expanding library (it occupies the basement, the attic and probably too many walls in between).
I just hope that my wife and/or my daughter will take care of it all when I’m dead. Kinda pointless to throw it all away.
December 15, 2025 @ 8:28 am
Copyright on old movies is 95 years, so movies from 1940 will be public domain in ten years and a couple of weeks.
December 13, 2025 @ 6:56 pm
Well this doesnt really pertain to this article though it could but i found this and thought i would mention it. There was this article on an old time country artist named wesley tuttle. Now the article said he was born this day in 1917 but wikipedia says december 30th. Just thought id mention it cause i found it interesting. He was way ahead of his time in lots of ways. Very popular for a while before he found religion and started doing more religious stuff. He started out with sons of the pioneers and also was in a couple westerns. Sounds actually pretty good though spotify has very few songs. Well thats my story for today. Sorry trigger, just seemed like info to pass regardless of his birthday.