At its best, artificial intelligence can assist people in analyzing data, automating tasks and developing solutions to big problems: fighting cancer, hunger, poverty and climate change. At its worst, AI can assist people in exploiting other humans, damaging the environment, taking away jobs and eventually making ourselves lazy and less innovative.
Likewise, AI is both a boon and a bane for the music industry. As a recording engineer and professor of music technology and production, I see a large gray area in between.
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has taken steps to address AI in recognizing contributions and protecting creators. Specifically, the academy says, only humans are eligible for a Grammy Award: “A work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any categories.”
The academy says that the human component must be meaningful and significant to the work submitted for consideration. Right now, that means that it’s OK for me to use what’s marketed as an AI feature in a software product to standardize volume levels or organize a large group of files in my sample library. These tools help me to work faster in my digital audio workstation.
However, it is not OK in terms of Grammy consideration for me to use an AI music service to generate a song that combines the style of say, a popular male folk country artist – someone like Tyler Childers – and say, a popular female eclectic pop artist – someone like Lady Gaga – singing a duet about “Star Trek.”
This song, one of the most popular on Spotify in Sweden, was banned from the country’s music charts after reporters discovered that it was substantially generated by AI.
The gray zone
It gets trickier when you go deeper.
There is quite a bit of gray area between generating a song with text prompts and using a tool to organize your data. Is it OK by National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Grammy standards to use an AI music generator to add backing vocals to a song I wrote and recorded with humans? Almost certainly. The same holds true if someone uses a feature in a digital audio workstation to add variety and “swing” to a drum pattern while producing a song.
What about using an AI tool to generate a melody and lyrics that become the hook of the song? Right now, a musician or nonmusician could use an AI tool to generate a chorus for a song with the following information:
“Write an eight measure hook for a pop song that is in the key of G major and 120 beats per minute. The hook should consist of a catchy melody and lyrics that are memorable and easily repeatable. The topic shall be on the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity.”
If I take what an AI tool generates based on that prompt, write a couple of verses and bridge to fit with it, then have humans play the whole thing, is that still a meaningful and significant human…
