No topic has stolen the music industry’s attention this year more than artificial intelligence. The tech has proven capable of making basic melodies, speeding up the producing process and helping mimic the vocals of superstars. As record labels, artists and fans look on both with curiosity and caution about how AI is going to revolutionize music creation, the Grammys weighed in late last week with a significant step for the award show, establishing a new rule that generative AI on its own is not eligible for awards, only human creators. The full language of the new rule is here.
To be clear, this is not a complete ban on AI itself. Songs with AI assistance can still be submitted, but as Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. told Rolling Stone, only the parts where a human creator was in the driver’s seat will be considered for awards. AI voice clones themselves will not be eligible for awards this year regardless of permission granted. But a human songwriter could still be awarded for the written compositions on songs that featured AI vocals, and a human artist can be eligible for their performance on a song that an AI algorithm wrote. And if a performance includes AI but is still more so a human-made track, that performance will be allowed.
“At this time what we’re doing is continuing to value and celebrate human creation,” Mason Jr. says. “This is an attempt to find the right answer. We don’t proclaim to have all the facts and all the answers on exactly the best way to treat AI. No one does. We’re trying to do our best and try and make sure we get this right and we’ll continue to assess as this tech advances. I want to make sure that we’re able to continue to serve and protect music people, music makers and the music community by the decision we make at the academy.”
Those who don’t know much about AI and music may exclusively think about viral songs featuring voice clones of famous artists, but it goes deeper, and in ways that aren’t always as controversial or as easy to hear. AI can help speed up mastering or separating stems, like Paul McCartney described to get John Lennon’s vocals out of an old demo. Given how quickly the tech is developing, Mason Jr. doesn’t see the new guideline as a forward-thinking policy that will eventually come into play years down the line: He expects it’s needed now.
Mason Jr. spoke about the new rule changes, his experience seeing AI make its way into the recording studio, and his own conversations with the songwriter behind the AI Drake and Weeknd song that made waves around the industry.
We’ve seen some songs with AI tech go viral this year, but it’s still so new. Why was now the time to update the rulebook?
The thing I’ll say right off the bat is in no way are we disqualifying AI generated material into our process. I’ve seen those headlines. We’re not banning AI music. We’re simply saying the AI portion of any song or album that’s submitted is not eligible for an award or nomination. There’s other portions of those songs that could potentially be eligible. AI in music is still the Wild West, but we want to move quickly because we expect there will be AI materials submitted for our consideration, and in the absence of some clarity, it would be completely disorganized as we tried to evaluate who’s eligible and who’s not. This was a chance to lay down the guidelines on how we were to approach it in this next award season.
So this wasn’t just thinking for the future, you think we’ll se AI tracks submitted as soon as this year?
Even in the recording sessions I’m involved in at my studio, I’m seeing AI used every day. Topliners are using it, people are creating tracks, AI is spitting out MIDI breakouts of stems that could be used in songs, there’s absolutely an involvement happening. We believe you could see material that had AI involvement in the process this year, yes. That’s why our head of awards Ruby Marchand brought this to our attention and I think it’s smart for us to consider the possibility of this happening this year. If the tech was five or 10 years out, we probably would hold a beat on getting the language into the rules. But because of the prevalence and relevance of the topic and the style of creativity that’s happening, I believe we could see AI participating in a song that is in our process this year or next year.
How do you determine when AI was used?
We’re counting on our creative community to be forthcoming about who’s writing the songs, who’s performing on the songs. We always will have the opportunity post-award, if we were to find out that someone wasn’t honest, we would want to take a look at that, and we have the right to do that. But we come from an honest community of people that make music or creatives and artists and we feel like they’ll give us the right information. But that’s just this year. We don’t know what’s going to happen next year. We don’t know what the technology will bring, whether that’s markers in music or metadata that shows exactly where things were created, who created them when and how.
Like I said, this is fluid and will change. We’ll continue to look at it we’ll be diligent about it. We’re not going to just let this sit as a practice or as a rule. We’re going to continue to look at it make sure that it’s working year to year or even month to month.
As a producer, do you find these new developments with AI inspiring or frightening?
As someone who’s spent my whole life trying to get to the point where I’m semi good at making music or playing an instrument, and then you see a computer that can do it instantly, that part’s frightening. But to see the productivity and the possibilities is exciting, and to see the speed at which you can cycle through ideas and try things is exciting. It’s always going to still come down to taste and curation and discernment of the creator. And that’s the part that’s still exciting. It’s not going to be like ‘hey, I just make a hot record and then we go have coffee.’ It’s going to be about working with the with the technology and blending it with human creativity.
Something that needs to be figured out is the payment structure and remuneration for creators. Does that original vocalist get paid [on AI cloned songs]? They absolutely need to if you’re using their voice, there’s got to be a way to protect them and have them get credit or make sure there’s a separation between the human version versus an AI version of that vocal performance. All those things need to be worked out both within our industry and on a legislative level.
The Academy requires material submitted to be non-infringing. Whether or not voice cloning is an infringement is still thorny, even though the labels are saying it is. How is the Academy viewing it?
I’m not going to take the stance or the Academy is not going to take the stance on what we think is right yet, There’s a lot of homework that needs to be done before we can really come to an official position. What we will say is if you’re using another artists voice, that’s not going to be considered for a Grammy nomination. Personally I think that if you’re using the voice of an artist, that artist has certain rights and that has to be worked out and I’ll leave it at that for me.
Have you heard any AI songs that’ve particularly caught your eye?
There have been a lot. David Guetta had one, there’s Ghostwriter’s song. There’s been a few songs that have caught all of our attention and I believe that’s why we’re having some of these conversations.
You’ve said recently you’ve been in touch with Ghostwriter, who wrote “Heart on My Sleeve” with the AI Drake vocals? What have those discussions been like?
Yes. We’ve had a couple conversations about the song and then just AI in general and the music industry in general. He was a part of our roundtable [over video call] that we had last week with tech leaders, platforms, labels and creatives and Academy leadership. I had no idea who he was just like everybody else. I still don’t know, the camera’s off and it’s a picture of someone in a blanket. I reached out, he reached out back and my message to him was ‘you’re an innovator. You’re kind of changing the game right now. I’d love to talk to you and pick your brain a little bit.’ He’s been very helpful in formulating our thoughts around AI and what are the potential dangers and what are the potential benefits?
How was he received at this roundtable given that there’s been so much controversy around the way these songs are made?
In my opinion he was very well received because he’s extremely knowledgeable. He’s extremely intelligent and thoughtful. He has not said this to me, but my feeling is he was doing this to start the conversation. And he’s done something that has shaken up our business in our industry, and he’s brought a lot of attention to a topic that needed discussion.