AI, Music, and a New Language of Human Connection

Two weeks ago, a new song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country Digital Song Sales Chart. It’s called “Walk My Walk” by the artist Breaking Rust. The song is gritty and emotionally raw. Hitting No. 1 demonstrates a deep resonance with a passionate audience. Last week, the song “Find Your Rest” by Solomon Ray reached No. 1 on the Billboard Christian Music chart.

What wasn’t initially revealed is that neither Breaking Rust nor Solomon Ray are people. They are AI personas.

This creates a quandary. We are taught that artistry requires a “soul” or human experience to create emotion. Yet millions of people felt something special from these songs created by an algorithm.

It is unsettling to admit that a machine can make us cry. We want to believe our tears respond only to another human soul, but these songs prove that our emotions are biology, not magic. We feel tricked, not just by the AI, but by our own bodies for reacting so genuinely to something synthetic.

The Science of Connection: How AI Masters Engagement

Music is a powerful source of human connection. It synchronises our bodies and activates the brain's trust and pleasure chemicals. The reason AI music like “Walk My Walk” touches us isn't because the AI feels emotion; it’s because the AI has mathematically mastered the patterns that trigger our emotions.

The AI isn’t “composing” in a human sense. It has been trained on millions of human songs. It knows, statistically, that a specific chord progression followed by a vocal lift is 96% likely to be associated with a certain feeling. It creates a distilled, idealised version of musical patterns that are evolutionarily guaranteed to push our emotional buttons.

Older AI models created an uncanny valley effect because they sounded too perfect. Newer models learn more than just the notes; they deliver them with “prosody” - the sound of emotion. The breathiness, the frayed note, the slight imperfection - these signals of authenticity have been programmed into the models. The AI generates a musical shape that aligns with the shape of our grief, love, or identity, allowing us to pour our own emotions into it.

Generative AI Tools: The Machine is Passing the Test

This shift was highlighted by a paper released in September titled “Echoes of Humanity". The research demonstrated that with earlier versions of song generation AI, humans were roughly 50% correct in distinguishing human-generated versus AI-generated songs - essentially a coin flip.

That research was based on version 3.5 of the AI music app Suno and they’re now running version 5.0 which is much better. The technical line between “real” and “synthetic” is being erased. But the real story isn’t the technical advance; it is about what we are doing with it.

AI for Social Impact: Scaling the Mission

Centre for Autism Services Alberta

My friend Jonathan Robb is the CEO of the Centre for Autism Services Alberta (CFASA), a wonderful organisation located physically in Edmonton and Calgary that serves thousands of families across the province. Using publicly available information regarding their values, services, and clients I generated the song “Every Step Shines” specifically for CFASA using Suno and shared it with him.

His response perfectly encapsulates the pragmatic shift we are seeing in leadership. While acknowledging the current cultural tension, he focuses on the additive nature of the technology.

“I personally love it, but I appreciate it’s controversial and scary for some,” he said. “Even my musically inclined daughter has reservations around AI music, but I think it has a time and a place and that’s what this represents. I think it’s an AND not an OR for music … and artists shouldn’t really be threatened anymore than any other human connection industry. Artists have been using advanced technology to mix music for decades.”

This distinction - an and rather than an or - is the core of mission amplification. CFASA doesn’t have the time or resource budget to hire a professional composer and studio to produce a brand anthem. Consequently, the choice here is not between a human artist and an AI. It’s a choice between having a powerful auditory asset to connect with donors and clients or having nothing at all. This technology allows them to communicate their mission and connect with families and donors emotionally and at a scale previously impossible.

Songs of Love Foundation

The real utility of this technology is not about manufacturing a hit country song but about facilitating connection.

Consider the Songs of Love Foundation. For decades, their mission has been to connect human songwriters with children facing serious illness to create free, personalised songs. This is beautiful work, but by necessity, it is slow and resource intensive.

Their recent partnership with Suno represents amplification, not replacement. The foundation uses AI to scale its mission, creating fully produced songs for more children at a much faster rate. Crucially, it “re-empowers” volunteer songwriters who, due to health issues, could no longer sing. They can now write lyrics and have the AI provide the voice.

Creating Personalised Tributes: A Song for My Father

I recently witnessed this dynamic personally. My brother has been compiling our family history. In its current state, it is a text document: a collection of facts, dates, and anecdotes. It’s accurate, but static.

As an experiment, I fed the core stories of this document into an AI program to create grounded lyrics, then fed these into Suno. When the song played, it didn't just sound like a folk-country track; for a moment, it connected me viscerally, to my father’s journey. It was shocking and touching to find his spirit in an algorithm, reminding me that while facts are accurate, sometimes only music can carry the weight of who he was. I shared this song “Ashes to Home” with my brother and sister and they were both genuinely moved.

I am aware of the criticism: that using AI cheapens art and hurts artists. That weighs on me and I have very mixed feelings. I don’t know where or how the line can be drawn. But my family was never going to commission a professional composer or hire a band. The logistics and costs make that prohibitive. The choice was not between an AI and human artists. The choice was between AI and silence.

These tools allowed me to create a deeply personal artefact of memory that simply would not have existed otherwise.

Moving Beyond Human vs AI

The “Breaking Rust” song I mentioned at the start of this article caused unease because it felt like a deception. We felt tricked by a machine masquerading as a human. And that is a real and important ethical issue about transparency and disclosure we must confront.

However, focusing only on the deception misses the utility. The true narrative of AI music is about fulfilment. It’s fulfilling and amplifying the mission of nonprofit organizations to connect with clients and donors, and fulfilling my family's desire to transform a historical document into a living tribute.

We often obsess over the Turing Test, asking if the machine can fool us into thinking it is human. But this is the wrong metric. The real test is one of utility and connection.

Just as the piano allowed us to express melodies we could not sing, these models allow us to express the grief, memory, and connection that we already hold inside but lack the technical skill to release.

The barrier to entry for musical expression has dropped to zero. For someone like me, who can’t carry a tune in a bucket, this is amazing. So, the question is no longer about what the machine can do, but what you will do with it.

What song is trapped inside you that you finally have the tools to write? What gift can you create for a loved one?

Jeff Uhlich

Founder & CEO

augmentus inc.

November 24^th, 2025

p.s. - if you're interested in creating a song for someone you love, drop me an email uhlich@augmentusconsulting.com I'll work with senders of the first three messages I get to create some connection.