New AI Policy Outlined by Grammys CEO

The Grammys has shared a new update on the use of AI when it comes to songwriting according to its CEO. This comes a month after some changes to the ceremony that saw guidelines changed to keep up with advancements in AI. While speaking to The Associated Press, Recording Academy CEO and President Harvey Mason Jr. said that “a work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any category.”

Essentially, if it’s purely created through AI it doesn’t meet eligibility. In a bid to make things as clear as possible, he went on to say, “Here’s the super easy, headline statement: A.I., or music that contains A.I.-created elements, is absolutely eligible for entry and for consideration for Grammy nomination. Period.”

He went on to further state, “What’s not going to happen is we are not going to give a Grammy or Grammy nomination to the A.I. portion.” It seems that the Recording Academy wants to ensure that they can stay ahead of the rapid pace of AI scaling in music.

Over the past few years, AI has inched its way into the music scene, most notably in Japan back in 2017 with the rise of Hatsune Miku. More recently, famous DJ David Guetta pointed to AI as being the future of music in some comments he made months ago.

But this is where things get very interesting. In his comments, Harvey said that the rules were looking at specifically how the AI was involved in the production of the content. He went on to give an example of this. “If an A.I. or voice modeling program performs the lead vocal on a song, the track would be eligible in a songwriting category, for example, but not a performance category, because “what is performing is not human creation.”

At the other end, he went on to state, “Conversely, if a song was sung by an actual human in the studio, and they did all the performing, but A.I. wrote the lyric or the track, the song would not be eligible in a composition or a songwriting category.”

To ensure that the Recording Academy is able to adhere to the times and embrace technological advancements, Mason explained: “I’ve met with the copyright office. We’ve talked about the future and what that looks like on a federal level and the legislative level.”

It’s clear that multiple industries not only want to find ways to benefit from rapid advancements in AI, but also ensure that guidelines are created to help navigate this fast-evolving technology.

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