The Recording Academy has updated its rules on Grammy Award eligibility for music created with artificial intelligence. The rules, set for the 2024 ceremony, were announced Friday and implement explicit restrictions on work containing generative AI content.
“Only human creators are eligible to be featured, considered, nominated or to win a Grammy Award,” said the new book of rules and guidelines read.
That being said, music created by a human and augmented with generative AI elements is allowed, as long as the human’s contribution to a work is “significant” and not trivially small. In addition, the human contribution must be in the category for which the work is being considered for the award. A clarifying example provided in the official rules and guidelines document states: “If the work is submitted in a songwriting category, there must be significant and more than minimal human authorship with respect to the music and/or lyrics.”
The third stipulation regarding the inclusion of generative AI in the Grammy Awards proceedings is that authors of AI material are not eligible to be a Grammy nominee or recipient “in regards to their contribution to the portion of the work consisting of such AI material”.
Long story short: Those who think of leaning heavily on generative AI to produce award-worthy work won’t be able to, but artists who simply use AI as one more tool in the proverbial toolbox seem to have academia’s approval in as far as prize eligibility is concerned, as long as they have a greater hand in creating a work than the AI they use.
The Recording Academy did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Beyond music and art, generative AI has been rapidly injecting itself into many other fields, including customer service work and the financial sector. In the latter case, he has been helping people map out their investment strategies.
