This much is known: “Walk My Walk,” a song by an artist called Breaking Rust, entered its second week Wednesday as the top song on Billboard’s country music digital sales chart.

After that, everything about Breaking Rust — the artist’s identity, whether Breaking Rust’s songs were created by artificial intelligence, and whether the songs’ popularity has been artificially inflated — quickly devolves into uncertainty. Is the song entirely AI? Partially AI? Maybe even a song meant to sound like AI? And who is behind Breaking Rust?

There’s few definitive answers. A request for comment sent by NBC News to the Instagram account of Breaking Rust went unanswered. The artist has virtually no other footprint outside of its Instagram, Spotify and YouTube pages.

The mystery has caused a stir in a

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