New Randy Travis Song Sparks AI Debate in Country Music

As Country fans embrace Lo-Fi trends, Nashville turns to the robots for help

Country music legend Randy Travis is back, over a decade after suffering a debilitating stroke, with a brand new single. But this time, he's getting help from “the latest artificial intelligence technology.”

The new single, titled "Where That Came From," was created with the assistance of an AI-powered music platform called Amper Music. According to a press release from Amper Music, Travis worked closely with the company's team to craft the lyrics and melody for the song, while the AI technology helped with the production and instrumentation.

Watch “Where That Came From,” Created by Amper Music, Randy Travis, and James Dupré

Technology has always had a profound impact on the arts. 

In fact -- many art historians argue that the invention of the camera led to the creation of abstract art.

Before photography, painters and sculptures were commissioned to recreate the likeness of royalty and the elites. Photography allowed artists to capture reality in a way that was previously impossible.

This new ability to capture the world objectively pushed artists in the late 1800s and early 1900s to look for deeper meanings and emotions within the human experience communicated through shapes, forms, and colors that the camera missed. Fifty years later, Jackson Pollock was throwing paint at the wall to capture the feelings of chaos and movement.

Over the last few decades, digital technology has ushered in a similar technology-based transformation in the arts. 

The Eventide H910 Harmonizer, the first digital pitch-shifting unit, was released in 1975. Twenty years later, in 1997, Auto-Tune, a software tool for correcting and enhancing vocal performances, hit the market. The software has become a common tool in modern music production, especially in genres such as pop, hip-hop, and electronic dance music. Auto-tune can be used subtly to correct minor pitch errors or creatively to achieve a robotic or synthesized effect.

Faith Hill’s “The Way You Love Me” from 1999 is one of the earliest country hits to use Auto-Tune, but many artists have used it, including Reba McEntire, Shania Twain, Tim McGraw, and Rascal Flatts.

In 2001, every traditional Country music icon, George Strait, released the song “Stars On The Water” with a digitally altered voice track.

Watch “Stars On The Water” by George Straight

Now, Amper Music claims their new AI technology is giving Randy Travis his voice back.

In 2013, Travis suffered a massive stroke. He was given just a 2% chance of survival.” Besides the paralysis, the area of his brain that controls speech and language was hit the hardest. A condition called apraxia limits his ability to speak — it’s why his wife, Mary Travis, assists him in interviews. It’s also why he hasn’t released new music in over a decade.

In a statement, Travis wrote that he was excited to explore new ways of creating music and was impressed with the collaboration results. 

"Working with Amper Music allowed me to experiment with new sounds and styles while still staying true to my roots in country music," he said.

Amper Music, founded in 2014, describes itself as a "creative AI" platform that allows anyone to create original music with the help of machine learning algorithms. The technology can analyze various inputs, such as genre, mood, and tempo, and generate a fully produced track in just a few minutes.

However, the technology still relies heavily on human inputs. James Dupré's voice played a crucial role in creating the new single. Amper Music used Dupré's voice as a reference point to create the instrumentation and production for the song. 

Dupré, a talented country singer and songwriter in his own right, has been standing in for Travis for the last few years on tour as a singing surrogate on stage.

“I’ve been told that I have a similar tone,” Dupre said on the Nashville, Tennessee-based Bobby Bones TV Show. 

Watch James Dupré Perform on Stage with Randy Travis

While it's a touching story and great to hear new work involving Randy Travis, the single's release does sound more like an infomercial for the AI industry rather than an authentic collaboration with him. He was involved, sure, but simply digitally enhancing the voice of your singing surrogate doesn't seem quite like the breakthrough being portrayed in the Nashville media.

The popularity of AI has led to startups using the term loosely to attract investments. The term “pseudo-AI” was coined to describe companies that “fake it until they make it,” telling investors and users they have developed a scalable AI technology while secretly relying on human intelligence. In some cases, humans are used to train the AI system and improve its accuracy. 

In 2018, CNBC published an article critical of Sophia, the AI robot from Hanson Robotics. When CNBC approached the company with a list of questions they wanted to ask, Hanson Robotics responded with a list of very specific questions for Sophia. In a follow-up video, CNBC questions whether the robot is meant to be research into artificial intelligence or is just a PR stunt.

In 2016, Bloomberg highlighted the plight of humans who spend 12 hours a day pretending to be chatbots for calendar scheduling services such as X.ai and Clara. The job is so mind-numbing that human employees say they are looking forward to being replaced by bots.

Even Facebook, which has invested heavily in AI, relied on humans to create its virtual assistant for Messenger.

There's no doubt about it—the AI revolution is coming. I'm just not convinced it's here yet. And that’s good news for humans because we're already seeing issues of abuse within various industries, and we don’t yet have the policy framework to respond.

The 2023 writers' strike shut down Hollywood productions for months. Strikers included a clause addressing the use of artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry. The clause stated that writers should receive proper credit and compensation for any AI-generated content used in film, television, or other media platforms. This was a significant step in recognizing the role of AI in the creative process and ensuring that human writers are not overlooked or undervalued in the industry. It’s a legitimate concern.

Last year, Sports Illustrated deleted web articles after a report claimed they were generated by artificial intelligence and published under fake author names. Tech publisher Futurism reported the issue after finding author headshots on an AI-generated image website. Journalists across

And while Amper Music has acknowledged James Dupré’s involvement in Randy Travis’s new “song,” it doesn’t appear he receives any official credit for his work. The video released by the company only shows a few quick shots through the studio door of him recording the tracks, apparently while everyone else is hanging out in the studio having a good old time.

While this might be a new Randy Travis single, this isn't Randy Travis's voice. This is James Dupré’s voice digitally altered to sound like Rany Travis. But then again, we haven't heard the real voices of artists in pop music, including pop-country music, for over two decades. So, within the context of Auto-Tune and digital voice enhancements, there's nothing new to see here. 

But what is new is that, once again, true artists, including Country Artists, are finding relevance in reflecting the human experience outside the grasp of even the largest supercomputers.

We know from the past that as technology develops, artists look for other avenues of relevance. When computers can create the perfect pitch, music is no longer about the recording. For years, the music industry has pursued the perfect Country singer created in a lab by the Nashville board of directors. 

But this pursuit has unintended effects. The debate over where computer-enhanced tracks end and AI begins has recentered the humans, like James Dupré, making the music we all love.