The Grammy Awards are ahead of the curve when it comes to dealing with artificial intelligence in the music industry. A change in awards guidelines last month opened the door for music created with AI to be eligible for awards.
However, “a work that contains no human authorship is not worthy of any award in any category,” according to the rules. Recording Academy CEO and President Harvey Mason Jr. recently outlined the criteria set out for the new rule, including a firm definition of what counts as significant human contribution.
“Here’s the super-simple explanation, the headline: Artificial intelligence or music containing elements created by artists is absolutely eligible for submission and consideration for a Grammy nomination. Point. What’s not going to happen is that we’re not going to give the AI part a Grammy or a Grammy nomination,” Mason told the Associated Press. “As long as the human contribution is more than marginal, which means to us that it is accountable, you will always be considered for a nomination or an award.”
AI Music at the Grammys: It’s all in the details
The Recording Academy has examined various approaches to addressing the recent industry frenzy, particularly through research and technical information summits. Apparently this has contributed to the new rule for the performance, songwriting and composition categories containing stricter parameters.
For example, if the lead vocals on an album were performed by an AI program or a program that enables voice modeling, it would be disallowed in the performance category, but allowed in the songwriting category, since that’s where the greatest human contribution was made. “Conversely, if a song was sung by a human in the studio and they did all the performance, but the AI wrote the lyrics or the track, the song wouldn’t be eligible in the composition or songwriting category,” explains Mason.
Human creativity should not be replaced
“We don’t want technology to replace human creativity,” he added. “We want to ensure that technology enhances, embellishes or complements human creativity. That’s why we chose this particular viewpoint in this awards cycle.”
Also because of the rapid growth of AI in the industry, Mason felt it was imperative to update these rules before the next Grammy Awards. “If the technology wasn’t available for another five or ten years, we’d probably hold back on bringing the language into the rules,” he recently told the US edition of ROLLING STONE. “But because of the prevalence and relevance of the topic and the type of creativity that’s taking place, I think we could see AI being involved in a song that’s going to play a part for us this year or next.”
By Larisha Paul
This text is a translation of a Article from ROLLING STONE.com