A collaborative track featuring AI-generated facsimiles of Drake and The Weeknd’s voices called “Heart on My Sleeve” has been submitted for Grammy consideration. One caveat: neither Drake nor the Weeknd had anything to do with it.
Ghostwriter, the shadowy creator of the AI-generated song that went viral in April, is seeking the music industry’s most coveted award for a fake duet – and according to Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. in an interview with The New York Times, “it’s absolutely eligible because it was written by a human being.”
A representative for Ghostwriter confirmed to the Times that “Heart on My Sleeve” was submitted for best rap song and song of the year, awards given to the writers of a song, as opposed to its performers. In this case, the lyrics were written by Ghostwriter, despite the computer-generated vocal performances.
But even if the track is considered eligible from a creative standpoint, Grammy rules require that songs have “generational distribution,” meaning “the broad release of a recording that is available nationwide through brick-and-mortar stores, third-party online retailers and/or streaming services. After initially appearing on YouTube and streaming services, the song disappeared when Universal Music apparently sent takedown notices to the DSPs. It has since been re-uploaded by unofficial third parties via the internet and streaming services. Given the copyright issues, the commercial viability of “Heart on My Sleeve” is an uphill battle. According to the Times, “Ghostwriter’s representative said they were aware of the requirement for commercial availability.
Representatives for Drake and the Weeknd did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment.
Mason clarified the Academy’s new rules on AI earlier this summer, with the Grammy chief telling Variety in July: “We’re not going to give a nomination or an award to an AI computer or to somebody who just did AI. That’s the distinction we’re trying to make. It’s the human award that highlights excellence driven by human creativity.”
This comes after the Recording Academy addressed AI in a lengthy new rule that says, among other things, that “a work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any category”. But the use of assistive AI is not completely banned, as in the case of Paul McCartney using computer technology to clean up an old John Lennon vocal track in a “new” Beatles song.
“If there are three or four Beatles singing on the record, and one of the voices is [sonically enhanced by] AI, it’s still a live human performance with a more than de minimis amount of Beatles participation,” says Mason. “Therefore, it would be eligible.”
Mason explained to Variety: “What we wanted to say was that material using AI can be submitted, but the human part of the composition or performance is the only part that can be awarded or considered for a Grammy Award. So if an AI modelling system or an AI application created a track – ‘wrote’ lyrics and a melody – that would not be eligible for a composition award. But if a human writes a track and AI is used to do the voice modelling or to create a new voice or to use someone else’s voice, the performance would not be eligible, but the writing of the track and the lyrics or the top line would absolutely be eligible for an award.”
He continued: “The rule is that as long as there’s more than a de minimis amount of human involvement in the part of the creativity that’s being evaluated for nomination, then it’s still eligible for nomination. So if you had a rap record where there were eight bars of AI rap, but the rest of the song was human rap and there’s a human chorus, that would still be eligible for a performance award. Obviously, there would be no award for the AI-created piece.
Mason previously told Variety that he had spoken to Heart on My Sleeve creator Ghostwriter, describing him as “very forward-thinking” and “creative”.
“From my perspective, this was an exercise for him to try to establish a dialogue and create some awareness of the possibilities and what some of the potholes are going to be,” Mason said in July. “I hate to put words in his mouth, but I feel like he understood exactly what he was doing – he knew this was going to be controversial.”
