Grammy Awards Get Serious With AI: Only Human Creators Can Be Nominated

Some songs composed with artificial intelligence (AI), like ‘Heart on My Sleeve’, can accumulate thousands of views and even become viral hits, but they do not qualify to be honored with a Grammy. We are not saying it, but the American academy itself, which has just updated its prize giving regulations.

But the music industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, if we can call it that, hasn’t completely closed the door on AI. In fact, it does not veto its use, but it establishes a series of strict requirements for all those who implement it in their works and aspire to win an award at the prestigious annual ceremony. Let’s see what the academy says about it.

Artificial intelligence yes, but not 100%

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has declared that “only human creators” are eligible to participate in the Grammy Awards. At this point, as we can see, all those works that have been fully developed by AIexclusion that reaches all available categories.

Now, the requirements to obtain a Grammy Award nomination go a little further as of this edition. Although the possibility of including elements created with AI within a work is admitted, the human component must be significant. The works that aim for the album of the year category, for example, must be made up of at least 20% human work.

In the past any artist, songwriter, producer or engineer etc. could win a album of the year nomination, even if he had a small contribution. New AI-powered rules have changed this scenario. They have even reduced the number of nominees for the four major categories (album of the year, song of the year, best new artist, record of the year) from ten to eight.

The changes to the Grammy Awards come amid the recent rise of AI, a discipline that is already transforming various industries and sectors of society. In the recording field, we have witnessed live phenomena such as an AI-generated Drake song that was a success, until the industry raged and ended up removing it from all possible digital platforms.

Later, Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s largest record label, launched a campaign for Spotify and Apple Music block services that use songs to train AI models. In addition, he promoted the removal of thousands of synthetic songs. The argument is that they were part of an artificial reproduction scheme used by certain users to illegally obtain royalties.

But the use of algorithms in this industry has also reached recognized artists. Paul MCCARTNEY, pick up bbc, has announced that “the final album by The Beatles” will be released this year, which will include the voice of John Lennon thanks to AI. “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure (…) Then we can mix the record, like you normally would. So it gives you some leeway,” said the artist.

Images: Karsten Winegart | The Recording Academy’s

In Xataka: Voicebox is Meta’s new voice generative AI system. And it’s so good that you won’t be able to use it