New Grammy Rule: No A.I., Dammit

• The Recording Academy released its revised Rules for the 66th GRAMMY Awards. Among the most significant updates: In the “Big Four” General Field categories: Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist — the number of final nominees has been reduced from ten back to its original number of eight.

And in a related topic, the Recording Academy also announced that now, to win a nomination for the Album of the Year category, a music creator has to account for at least 20% of the work. That includes all credited artists, featured artists, songwriters, producers, engineers, mixers and mastering engineers, and differs from a decision made in 2021, which allowed anyone who worked on the album to receive a nomination.

And in the increasingly controversial topic of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), a new Grammy Rule on “Generative Artificial Intelligence” states, in part: “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 Categories. [Ed. note: the bolding is ours]. A work that features elements of A.I. material (i.e., material generated by the use of artificial intelligence technology) is eligible in applicable Categories; however: (1) the human authorship component of the work submitted must be meaningful and more than de minimis (defined as lacking significance or importance; so minor as to merit disregard); and the author(s) of any A.I. material incorporated into the work are not eligible to be nominees or GRAMMY recipients insofar as their contribution to the portion of the work that consists of such A.I material is concerned.”