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At its best, AI helps people analyze data, automate tasks, and develop solutions to big problems: fighting cancer, hunger, poverty, and climate change. At its worst, AI can help people exploit others, destroy the environment, take away jobs, and ultimately make us lazy and less innovative.
Likewise, artificial intelligence can be both a blessing and a curse for the music industry. As a recording engineer and music technology and production professor, I see a big gray area between the two.
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has taken steps to address issues with artificial intelligence in recognizing contributions and protecting creators. Specifically, the Academy said that only humans are eligible for Grammy Awards: “Works that do not contain a human author are not eligible in any category.”
The human component must be meaningful and important to the work submitted for consideration, the Academy said. Now, this means I can use features marketed as AI features in software products to standardize volume levels or organize a large set of files in a sample library. These tools help me work faster in my digital audio workstation.
However, for Grammy purposes, I cannot use an AI music service to generate a song that combines the styles of a popular male rockabilly country artist (e.g. Tyler Childers) and a popular female eclectic pop artist (e.g. Lady Gaga) to sing a duet about Star Trek.
gray area
Things get trickier as you go deeper.
There’s quite a bit of gray area between generating songs with text prompts and using tools to organize the data. Is it OK to use an AI music generator to add harmonies to a song I wrote and recorded with a human, per National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences GRAMMY standards? Almost certainly. The same goes if someone is using the features in a digital audio workstation to add variety and “swing” to drum patterns while producing a song.
How about using AI tools to generate melodies and lyrics that become the highlights of a song? Now, musicians or non-musicians can use artificial intelligence tools to generate a chorus for a song that contains the following information: “Write an eight-bar chorus for a pop song in the key of G major at 120 beats per minute. The chorus should consist of a catchy melody and easy-to-repeat lyrics. The theme should be the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity.”
If I take what an AI tool generates from that prompt, write a few verses and bridge to fit it, and then have a human perform the entire thing, is that still a meaningful and important human contribution?
Performing, sure, but what about songwriting? If AI generates the attractive parts first, does that mean it is ultimately responsible for the other parts humans create? Did the person who provided these tips meaningfully contribute to the creation of the music you ultimately heard?
AI music is coming
The Recording Academy is currently doing its best to take advantage of rapidly evolving technologies to recognize and address these challenges.
Not long ago, pitch correction software like Auto-Tune caused quite a bit of controversy in the music industry. Auto-Tune, Melodyne, and other pitch correction software are now used in nearly every music genre, and that’s no obstacle to winning a Grammy.
When the average music listener discovers that artificial intelligence has been used to create a song they love, maybe ten years from now they won’t bat an eye. Already, people are choosing to listen to music generated by artificial intelligence.
You’ll almost certainly come across an AI-generated article (no, not this one). If you’re an avid social media consumer, you’ve probably seen a lot of AI nonsense.
In fact, you might already be listening to AI-generated music, too. Some major streaming services, such as Spotify, don’t do much to identify or restrict AI-generated music on their platforms.
About the author
Mark Benincosa is an associate professor of teaching at West Virginia University. This article is reproduced from dialogue Licensed under Creative Commons. read Original article.
On Spotify, an AI “artist” named Aventhis currently has more than 1 million monthly listeners without disclosing that it was AI-generated. YouTube comments on Aventhis’ song “Mercy on My Grave” indicate that most commenters believe the song was composed by a human. This raises questions about why Spotify or YouTube don’t disclose this information, other than “[h]In the artist’s description, he “embraces the creativity of artificial intelligence as part of his artistic process.”
Not only can AI be used to create songs, AI bots can also be used to generate clicks and listens. This raises the possibility that the streaming service’s recommendation algorithms are being trained to push this music to human subscribers. For the record, Spotify and most streaming services say they don’t support the practice.
Try to keep it real
If you feel that artificial intelligence in music harms human creators and makes the world a less beautiful place, you can choose to avoid it. Determining whether a song was written by artificial intelligence is possible, but not foolproof. You can also find services designed to limit artificial intelligence in music.
Bandcamp recently developed AI-powered music guidelines on its platform that are similar to those from the Recording Academy and are more friendly to music creators. As of January 2026, Bandcamp will not allow music that is “entirely or substantially generated by artificial intelligence.” No matter how you feel about AI-generated music, Bandcamp’s approach gives artists and listeners a platform that puts human creation at the core of the experience.
Ideally, Spotify and other streaming platforms will provide clear disclaimers and provide listeners with filters to tailor their use of services based on AI content. At the same time, AI in music can have a large gray area between acceptable tools and questionable practices.