The Grammy Awards has made its ruling on AI being used in music.
In conversation with the Associated Press, Recording Academy CEO and President Harvey Mason Jr. announced that music that uses AI will be eligible for a Grammy, but “a work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any category."
“Here’s the super easy, headline statement: AI, or music that contains AI-created elements is absolutely eligible for entry and for consideration for Grammy nomination. Period," Mason explained. "What’s not going to happen is we are not going to give a Grammy or Grammy nomination to the AI portion.”
In an effort to keep up with the advancement of AI and its growing use in the music industry, the Grammys felt it important to update its rules now. A lead vocal can be generated by AI or a voice modeling program and be eligible in a songwriting category, but not a performance category. And it works vice versa. If the lyric was AI generated but a human performed the song in a studio, the song would not be eligible in a composition or a songwriting category, but could be for performance.
Added Mason, “As long as the human is contributing in a more than de minimis amount, which to us means a meaningful way, they are and will always be considered for a nomination or a win. We don’t want to see technology replace human creativity. We want to make sure technology is enhancing, embellishing, or additive to human creativity. So that’s why we took this particular stand in this award cycle.”
This news comes in the wake of artists such as Paul McCartney, David Guetta and Grimes admitting to producing music with the help of AI.