Music With AI Qualifies for Grammy Nomination: Academy CEO

Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr says music with content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) will be eligible for a Grammy nomination, provided it has human input.

A song whose lyrics AI wrote won’t be eligible for the Songwriter category, while a track whose vocals are synthetic cannot win a Performance of the Year award.

Grammy Boss Says AI Music Must Have Human Element

Mason Jr confirmed the new rules three days after Paul McCartney confirmed the last Beatles record used John Lennon’s voice from an old demo.

While the CEO couldn’t confirm or deny whether the project would qualify, he said that early reports suggesting human involvement would qualify the work for nomination, according to revised Grammy rules, which state,

“A work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any category.”

The Academy developed new guidelines from robust research and tech industry consultations. The rules agree with guidance the US Copyright Office issued in March. The department asserted that the content AI creates without human input cannot enjoy copyright protection under the US Constitution.

Accordingly, the CEO stressed the importance of preserving human creativity amid the hype around new generative technologies.

“We want to make sure technology is enhancing, embellishing, or adding to human creativity.”

Congress uses the US Constitution’s definition of an author to enforce copyright laws. However, the Copyright Office’s authorship guidelines have not been tested in court, warns Harvard intellectual property guru Louis Tompros.

Can the Academy Recognize Fake Songs?

The Recording Academy’s challenge lies in how to enforce the new rules. Not many companies know how their large-language models generate responses to prompts. Hence, unlike sampling, which is a direct copy of an artist’s work and may be covered under fair use rules, AI can create music that includes elements of copyrighted work more subtly.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently suggested code audits of its Generative Pre-trained Transformer language model to promote transparency. Given AI’s potential for abuse, UK Labour spokesperson Lucy Powell suggested that only licensed companies should train AI models.

Google said its early attempts to identify unreal content include appending metadata describing a file’s original context. The company will also test embedding resilient watermarks in digital files.

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