It’s now official that any song that is generated by AI will not be receiving a Grammy Award, at least, not now.
Although the Recording Academy may consider music with limited AI-generated voices or instrumentation for award recognition, CEO Harvey Mason Jr. stated this week that the organization will only celebrate songs written and performed “mostly by a human.”
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“At this point, we are going to allow AI music and content to be submitted, but the Grammys will only be allowed to go to human creators who have contributed creatively in the appropriate categories,” Mason said in an interview with Grammy.com.
“If there’s an AI voice singing the song or AI instrumentation, we’ll consider it. But in a songwriting-based category, it has to have been written mostly by a human.
“The same goes for performance categories – only a human performer can be considered for a Grammy. If AI did the songwriting or created the music, that’s a different consideration. But the Grammy will go to human creators at this point.”
According to the CEO’s remarks, the bogus Drake / The Weeknd song “Heart on My Sleeve,” which went popular earlier this year before being removed from streaming services due to copyright violations, would not be eligible.
Another AI-generated scammer sold false Frank Ocean tunes for a reported CAD 13,000 ($9,722 in US dollars) in April, while Spotify has been busy removing tens of thousands of AI-created songs from its collection.
On the other hand, it calls into question singers such as Holly Herndon, who used an AI version of her voice in a cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”
(The AI-generated performance suggests no, but does it make a difference that it’s her own voice?) Or the planned “final” Beatles track, which Paul McCartney claims will employ AI to isolate distorted audio of John Lennon’s voice.
And would Taryn Southern, who (clearly) employed AI to co-produce her debut album in 2018, be eligible? SurgeZirc US has reached out to the Recording Academy for clarity on these cases and will update this post as soon as they respond.
Mason acknowledged that AI would change the music industry. “AI is going to absolutely, unequivocally have a hand in shaping the future of our industry,” Mason said.
“So, we have to start planning around that and thinking about what that means for us. How can we adapt to accommodate? How can we set guardrails and standards? There are a lot of things that need to be addressed around AI as it relates to our industry.”
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The CEO added that the Recording Academy recently held a summit “with industry leaders, tech entrepreneurs, streaming platforms, and people from the artist community” to discuss AI’s future.
“We talked about the subject and discussed how the Recording Academy can be helpful: how we can play a role and the future of AI in music.”
