An AI-generated song made to sound similar to real-life artists Drake and The Weeknd has been submitted for Grammy consideration, per Variety.
The song “Heart on My Sleeve” started gaining traction earlier this year after it was created by an artist known as Ghostwriter. Though the vocals are computer generated, the lyrics were written by the person behind that name, which makes the song a contender for the best rap song and song of the year categories.
Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. explained in an interview with The New York Times that the song is “absolutely eligible because it was written by a human.”
“We’re not going to be giving a nomination or an award to an AI computer or someone who just prompted AI. That’s the distinction that we’re trying to make. It’s the human award highlighting excellence, driven by human creativity,” he said in a July interview with Variety.
The Recording Academy made allowances for the use of AI as long as human creativity was still involved, with one example being Paul McCartney enhancing the late John Lennon’s vocals for a Beatles song.
“If three or four Beatles are singing on the record, and one of the voices [has been sonically enhanced by] AI, it’s still a live human performance with a more than di minimis amount by The Beatles,” Mason said. “Therefore it would be eligible.”
Mason continued, “What we intended to say was that material using AI can be submitted, but the human portion of the of the composition, or the performance, is the only portion that can be awarded or considered for a Grammy Award. So if an AI modeling system or app built a track — ‘wrote’ lyrics and a melody — that would not be eligible for a composition award. But if a human writes a track and AI is used to voice-model, or create a new voice, or use somebody else’s voice, the performance would not be eligible, but the writing of the track and the lyric or top line would be absolutely eligible for an award.”
The music exec also praised the person behind “Heart on My Sleeve” specifically, saying the artist was “creative.”
“From my perspective, this has been an exercise for [Ghostwriter] to try and establish a dialogue and create some awareness around the possibilities and what are going to be some of the potholes,” Mason told the outlet in July. “I hate to put statements in his mouth, but my feeling is that he understood exactly what he was doing — he knew this was going to be controversial.”
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