The anonymous artist Ghostwriter could be nominated for a Grammy for a song with vocals that aren’t even real.
The AI-generated track “Heart on My Sleeve”, which mimics Drake and The Weeknd was submitted for next year’s Grammy awards, reps for the artist confirmed to the New York Times.
The song was submitted for best rap song and song of the year, and despite the use of AI, Harvey Mason, Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, told The New York Times that it was okay.
“As far as the creative side, it’s absolutely eligible because it was written by a human,” he said.
The categories are awarded to the songwriters, as opposed to the performers. In this case, the lyrics were created by Ghostwriter, with AI performances.
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Last April, “Heart on My Sleeve” was pulled from streaming services after generating more than 600,000 plays on Spotify and 275,000 views on YouTube.
In a statement to Billboard, UMG denounced the track and usage of AI by saying the song posts “demonstrate why platforms have a fundamental legal and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in ways that harm artists.”
“I knew right away as soon as I heard that record that it was going to be something that we had to grapple with from an Academy standpoint, but also from a music community and industry standpoint,” the Grammys CEO said.
“When you start seeing A.I. involved in something so creative and so cool, relevant and of-the-moment, it immediately starts you thinking, ‘OK, where is this going? How is this going to affect creativity? What’s the business implication for monetization?’”
The Recording Academy also announced Artificial Intelligence “protocols” earlier this year, via Billboard.
“Only human creators are eligible to be submitted for consideration for, nominated for, or win a Grammy Award. A work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any category. The Academy may disqualify any entry in a particular category if it determines, in the Academy’s sole discretion, that such entry does not incorporate meaningful and more than de minimis human authorship that is relevant to such category. {The Academy offered a definition of that term: “De minimis is defined as lacking significance or importance, so minor as to merit disregard.”
Ghostwriter returned with a new AI-generated song titled “Whiplash,” featuring vocals that sound like Travis Scott and 21 Savage.
Find out which song was dubbed the Song of Summer 2023.