Recording Academy head clarifies that AI Drake/The Weeknd song isn't eligible for a Grammy
But not for the reasons you might be assuming, as the AI music issue only gets thornier
Well, if Ghostwriter—the AI-employing artist who recently submitted a song called “Heart On My Sleeve,” featuring digitally recreated versions of the voices of Drake and The Weeknd, for Grammy consideration—was trying to kick up some chaos, they’ve certainly succeeded by now. The submission of the track has now elicited multiple responses from Recording Academy chief Harvey Mason, Jr., who had to issue a clarifying statement today that the song is not, in fact, eligible for the Grammys—but not for the reason you might immediately think.
As we’ve noted before, Ghostwriter took a clever tack with their Grammy submission, picking categories (“Best Rap Song” and “Song Of The Year”) that credit writers, not performers—and since the song’s use of AI was only for the voices, not the writing, it qualifies on that regard. But, Mason has clarified—pointing to reports that lost some of the nuance of comments he gave to The New York Times this week, the song is ineligible for other reasons: I.e., the “commercially available” requirement for Grammy consideration, which says a song has to be available to legally buy or stream to count. And “Heart On My Sleeve” got pulled of the internet rather quickly, thanks to the legal efforts of Drake/The Weeknd publisher Universal Music Group.
Here’s where Mason’s comments get really interesting, though: He asserts, in a recent social media post, that, “Even though it was written by a human creator, the vocals were not legally obtained, the vocals were not cleared by the label or the artists, and the song is not commercially available, and because of that, it’s not eligible.” It’s that “legally obtained” bit that’s going to get very weird, very fast, as the music industry continues to contend with the rise of increasingly sophisticated tech. After all, the voice samples in “Heart On My Sleeve” weren’t pulled from existing Drake or The Weeknd songs—that’s entirely the point, and it makes the “clearance” aspect pretty murky. The legality of using existing art as training data for AI is currently being litigated in a variety of legal cases, most of them related to the visual arts, but it’s clearly about to get pretty ugly in the musical world, too. “Heart On My Sleeve” might not be eligible right now, but it’s clear that people are going to continue to push these boundaries for years to come.