The Recording Academy has announced a new list of rule changes affecting nominees and content across multiple Grammy categories. Chief among these updates are new rules for all categories that address the emerging wave of artificial intelligence, or AI technology: “Only human creators are eligible to submit for consideration.”
Rules passed at the academy last month Board of Trustees The meeting, went on to explain: “Works that do not contain human authorship do not qualify for any category.”
However, for works that do contain some human authorship and some artificial intelligence, the Academy must provide: “The human authorship portion of the submitted work must be meaningful and not just minimal.” Specifically, this means that if When it comes to artificial intelligence, no matter what the job is, then the human contribution must be a major creative contribution. The Academy defines “minimum” as: “Lacking meaning or importance; small enough to be ignored.”
The Academy also clarified that any authors who incorporate AI-generated material into their work are not eligible for nomination unless they contribute more than just AI elements.
The announcement comes at a time when artificial intelligence is becoming an emerging force in the creative world – just days after Sir Paul McCartney revealed he had used artificial intelligence to complete an existing A decades-old demo that would be released as the Beatles’ “last” song. McCartney’s work appears to still be eligible for nomination under the new rules.
In other rule changes, the Academy announced that, going forward, a creator must appear on more than 20 percent of an album to be included in an Album of the Year nomination. In the past, anyone involved with a record—from songwriters to engineers—was nominated. In addition, the academy has reduced the number of nominees for its “big four” categories (best new artist, album of the year, song and record) from 10 to eight. Earlier this month, the Academy announced that new categories would also be added.