Nominations for the 2024 Grammy Awards may look different from previous years. With the wider-scale emergence of AI technology in the entertainment industry, made known to the public as late as 2022, the Recording Academy is expecting a lot of the music submissions for nominations to contain AI properties.
Harvey Mason Jr., the Recording Academy CEO and President, is aware of the latest wave in the music industry and is creating boundaries on the amount of credit attributed to AI when it comes to the Grammys.
“Here’s the super easy, headline statement: AI, or music that contains AI-created elements is absolutely eligible for entry and for consideration for Grammy nomination, period,” said Mason in an interview with AP News. “What’s not going to happen is we are not going to give a Grammy or Grammy nomination to the AI portion.”
In other words, any part of a song that is produced by AI technology, whether that be songwriting or performance audio, will not be eligible to win a Grammy. Only humans who actually contribute through the form of songwriting, singing, rapping, producing, and so forth, can obtain an award.
For instance, if a YouTuber creates a song using the voice of a famous singer through AI technology and it becomes a hit, even receiving a Grammy nomination, the YouTuber will not be eligible for a Grammy should the song be nominated in the singing category.
“As long as the human is contributing in a more than de minimis amount, which to us means a meaningful way, they are and will always be considered for a nomination or a win,” Mason Jr. added. “We don’t want to see technology replace human creativity. We want to make sure technology is enhancing, embellishing, or additive to human creativity. So that’s why we took this particular stand in this award cycle.”
Terms for the Grammy Award have been updated in the Recording Academy’s rule book. The voting process is an extensive one consisting of a screening by 350+ experts, nomination rounds by voting members, and special nominating committees, and then, final voting.
