Grammys set new rules, music industry is embracing AI?

Author | Wan Yi Edit | Fan Zhihui

Musicians who hate AI creation can breathe a sigh of relief for a while.

Previously, an AI-generated song "Heart on My Sleeve" based on the sounds of Drake and The Weekend became popular overseas and was considered to be the first AI music to go out of the circle. Although the song was later removed from major platforms due to pressure from Universal Music, it seems that the controversial replacement of human music creation by AI is becoming a reality. There are even concerns that the next step for AI music could be to win a Grammy.

Recently, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy organizer, updated a series of selection rules to give the answer in the clause involving AI music: Entries can use AI elements, but works that are entirely AI-generated are not eligible for any awards. That is, at least according to the new Grammys, AI cannot replace humans. 

As soon as this move came out, although it was opposed and questioned by many netizens, it has to be said that the attitude of the Grammys is indeed in line with the current attitude of the European and American music industry to AI creation. However, in the face of the rolling wave of AIGC, the music industry is actually acting silently, choosing to join if it can't be beaten.

Can AI win the Grammys?

In the face of accelerated development of AI technology, the worries of human creators are not impossible, and the industry represented by Grammys is also a reassuring pill. 

The rules state that "the Grammy Awards recognize creative excellence." Only human creators are eligible to be submitted for consideration, nominated, or won a Grammy. ” 

While entries can contain AI-assisted entries, the Grammys stipulate that the part of the work that is created by humans must be "meaningful" and relevant to the competition for an award. For example, if you are to enter a songwriting award, human creators need to have a clear contribution in music or lyrics, and in the performance category, human musicians also need to have "meaningful" participation.

At the same time, in order to be nominated in the album of the year category, the creator's contribution to the album must be at least 20% or more in order to be eligible. It is worth mentioning that there was no such provision before. In the past, any producer, songwriter, engineer, or featured artist on an album could be nominated for Album of the Year, even if that person's contribution was small. 

Although record companies are particularly concerned about the issue of AI infringement, Harvey Mason Jr., CEO and president of Grammy organizers, stressed in an interview that the industry needs to embrace AI and establish standards to adapt to the impact of AI on the art world and society as a whole. 

For this new regulation, most netizens expressed doubts or objections. Abacus.AI co-founder and CEO Bindu Reddy believes that this is a kind of discrimination against AI, a human escape from competition, "Our nature to avoid competition at the expense of innovation and creativity seems to be working again." ”

Some users of the American social news site Reddit believe that this rule is not easy to enforce. With the emergence of various AI-assisted creation software, AI can assist from lyrics, composition, singing and even mixing and arranging, and it has become almost impossible to completely eliminate AI. Because the line between human music and AI music is rather blurred and difficult to identify, "What if I write lyrics in ChatGPT?" How do you know if I wrote it? The point is, how to draw this line, how to implement it? ” 

Some netizens worry that AI technology will become another monopoly advantage for mainstream artists.

After all, mainstream record labels have the money to develop and invest in more cutting-edge AI technology to improve the presentation of music, thereby opening the gap with independent musicians, which has already happened. Although the quality of music and technology are not necessarily related, it has to be admitted that mainstream record companies and artists are quite active in exploring AI technology, and have indeed created some of their own advantages. 

For example, just this month, Paul McCartney, the former backbone of the Beatles, announced that he would use AI technology to extract John Lennon's voice to make "the last Beatles record." Previously, HYBE, which acquired AI voice company Supertone, also launched artificial intelligence artist MINDNATT this month, which is equivalent to the digital avatar of the famous Korean folk singer Lee Hyun, helping Lee Hyun's song "Masquerade" launch six foreign language versions, as well as songs and even female versions. "Masquerade" surpassed 750,000 views in just 7 days on YouTube and was thanked by many Spanish-speaking fans.

After listening to Chinese version of the music, I felt that although Chinese pronunciation was indeed relatively standard, it sounded particularly emotionless, and some of the accents still felt unnatural, like pronunciation rather than song. If we want to achieve a more natural effect, I believe that the staff will need to work different languages and cultures in terms of lyrics and tone expression, but such rapid progress is disturbing enough. 

As Harvey Mason Jr. said in an interview, "It's not advisable to be disrupted by AI music without facing it, and I'm a little hesitant and worried about the unknown impact of AI in the coming months and years." But I know full well that this is bound to be part of the music industry, the art world, and society as a whole. ”

The music industry has embraced AI music amid concerns

The Grammys' attitude is also consistent with that of the music industry: embracing AI as a creator aid, rather than a substitute for human music.

This year, Universal Music has repeatedly emphasized the copyright issues that the development of generative AI will cause, and immediately asked the platform to remove the songs after someone used the voice of its artist Drake to make songs and became popular. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the interests of record labels, has also joined dozens of music industry organizations to form a new industry coalition, the Human Artistry Campaign, to oversee the use and development of AI that does not infringe on human culture and art.

Despite this, Universal Music is not resisting the technology, but actively using generative AI as a tool to help the company's business development. 

In the past two years, Universal Music's label Ingrooves Music Group has been committed to automating AI-assisted marketing campaigns, identifying high-value audiences, and predicting high-value social media audience behavior, and has obtained 3 patents in this regard. Last month, Universal Music also entered into a strategic partnership with AI sound startup Endel to create "AI-powered, musician-driven functional music." Previously, the company has received investment from music-related companies such as Warner Music, Sony, AVEX, and Royalty Exchange.

At the same time, music companies represented by the three major records have also invested in or acquired many AI creation platforms. Last year, Universal Music invested in Soundful, an AI-assisted music creation platform; At the same time, Warner Music invested in Lifescore, an AI-assisted music creation platform, and Sony Music launched the AI-assisted creation platform Flow Machines. 

Recently, Believe's platform TuneCore also announced that it intercepts music generated entirely by AI. According to Believe, Believe is working with AI companies to monitor AI-generated audio tracks with 99.9% accuracy; At the same time, Believe is also exploring monetizing AI-generated music to feed back its used copyrighted content (such as sound performances). 

Although the world wants to get ahead of the development of AI, because AI model training requires a large number of human creative content, its unbridled development can easily infringe the interests of copyright owners, so risk management is equally important. 

At the legislative level, the attitudes of countries are different, even divergent.

Among them, the EU is perhaps the most conservative. As the first region to legislate to regulate AI, the European Parliament voted this month to pass the draft authorization of the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), which will officially enter into force in 2024, becoming the world's first artificial intelligence legislation. With the goal of "ensuring that AI systems used in the EU are safe, transparent, traceable, non-discriminatory and environmentally friendly", the decree will regulate various AI technologies to varying degrees, but the extent to which it will be implemented is unknown. 

The opposite of European caution is Japan. Here, from the central government to the local and corporate levels, there is a strong interest in ChatGPT. In April, Japan's Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Keiko Nagaoka, made it clear that the Japanese government does not consider training AI with copyrighted content, even for commercial use, to violate copyright law. This year, Yokosuka City in Kanagawa Prefecture has tried to fully introduce ChatGPT to local governments for official purposes.

In contrast, the United Kingdom and the United States are trying to find a balance between risk and opportunity. 

The UK released a white paper in March called A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation, but it only provided some guidelines for regulators. Although the United States has issued the AI Risk Management Framework 1.0, which provides a regulatory framework for relevant institutions to design and manage trustworthy AI, it has been slow to propose comprehensive legislation related to regulation; It wasn't until this month that Congress seemed to finally realize the risks, proposing a bipartisan proposal to create a National AI Commission to enact relevant legislation.

Although the attitude of national laws is still ambiguous, financing in the field of AI music is already in full swing. 

Last month alone, there were more than 5 AI music-related investment and financing events, including: the acquisition of AI sampling platform Aptone by music tech startup Cyanite; Generative AI-powered music startup BIDBOX.IO has completed a seed funding round, raising $7 million from Forerunner, Super Startups and Ulu Ventures. AI music streaming platform WAVs AI raised $20 million in funding from Canadian venture capital Regal Investments; AI sub-track company AUDIOSHAKE raised $2.7 million in seed funding from several music companies, including PeerMusic. 

As mentioned above, many mainstream musicians are also actively embracing AI technology. Canadian singer Grimes, who is always at the forefront of technology, not only did not worry about his voice being infringed, but also took the initiative to cooperate with the AI platform Elf.Tech, so that all platform users can use Grimes' voice, on the condition that 50% of the recording royalties of the song are shared.

Elf.Tech main interface

Today, Grimes has partnered with independent music distribution platform TuneCore, allowing musicians to create with Elf.Tech and distribute their work to all major streaming platforms with a single click.

epilogue

If governments and music companies still need to balance risk and opportunity, then musicians have reason to try AI creation tools, both from the perspective of curiosity and fear. 

In fact, the percentage of musicians already using AI may be much higher than we think. According to a study released by Ditto Music in April, Ditto Music found that nearly 60% of more than 1,200 surveyed users are already using AI, including making album covers, mixing sounds, and composing. 

But while AI can share the work, it also replaces the work of some people. "Mastering engineers will be the first to leave, then the mixers," says YouTube music personality and veteran producer Rick Beato, who expressed concern about the recording industry, predicting that AI mixing/mastering tools will be able to mimic anyone's style. 

With these AI tools to improve all aspects of music production, it has become difficult to identify or eliminate whether AI is involved in creation, and the use of AI-assisted creation has gradually become mainstream, and it is almost impossible to deny AI creation without the government's forced intervention. 

In this way, the new Grammy's rules may not be ambiguous, but a firm statement that no matter how AI technology develops, the art of music must still be the privilege of human beings!

This article is the original manuscript of Music Herald, reprinting and business cooperation, please contact us.