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LOS ANGELES – Last month, the Recording Academy announced a series of changes to the Grammy Awards to better reflect the evolving music industry. Among those newly established guidelines, protocols incorporating technological advances in machine learning have sparked headlines: “Only human creators” can win the music industry’s highest regard for a decision to use artificial intelligence in popular music.
The rules say, in part, “A work without human scribe is ineligible in any category.”
As the music industry continues to adapt to this new technology, so will the Grammys, said Recording Academy CEO and President Harvey Mason Jr.
“Here’s a very simple headline statement: AI or music that contains AI-generated elements is eligible for consideration for an entry and a Grammy nomination. Period,” Mason told The Associated Press. “What’s not going to happen is we’re not going to give the AI category a Grammy or a Grammy nomination.”
If an AI or voice modeling program provides the lead vocals on a song, the track would qualify in the songwriting category, for example, but not the performance category, because “it’s not a human creation doing it,” he explains. “On the other hand, if a song was in the studio sung by an actual human and they did all the performances, but an AI wrote the lyrics or the track, the song wouldn’t qualify in the composition or song category.”
“As long as the human being is contributing more than a de minimis amount in a way that makes sense to us, they will be considered for a nomination or a win,” he continued. “We don’t want to see technology replace human creativity. We want to make sure that technology is enhancing, enhancing or complementing human creativity. That’s why we’ve taken this special position in this awards cycle.”
The Recording Academy has been setting AI-related rules following the popularity of new songs created with AI technology: David Guetta’s “Emin-AI-em”, AI -TikTok user @ghostwriter977, Grimes’ voice modeling AI software.
To establish their AI guidelines, the Recording Academy conducted extensive research, including technology conferences.
“We met with the Copyright Office. We talked about the future and what it looks like at the federal level and the legislative level,” Mason said, adding that AI discussions “have really come to a head in the last six months.”
The new Grammy AI protocols were compiled using artificial intelligence to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old monitor three days after Paul McCartney’s performance of “The Last Beatles Record”. Unaware of the scope of the technology, Mason could neither confirm nor deny whether the song was eligible for a Grammy nomination.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said. “But from the first descriptions I’ve heard, I think there will be elements of creation that are absolutely worthy.”
So, can Grammy viewers expect to see a work created at least partially with AI nominated for an award early next year?
It’s impossible to predict what’s coming. But Mason confirmed, “People are using the technology. I think it’s going to be included in a lot of records this year, so whether some of them get nominated or not, I’m sure there will be submissions.”
The 2024 Grammy Awards will return to Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena on Sunday, February 4, 2024, airing live on CBS and streaming live on Paramount+.
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