Grammys Boss Says AI Usage Isn't A Dealbreaker When It Comes To Award Nominations

As AI becomes an ever-growing trend in not just the music industry, but the wider world, Harvey Mason Jr. – the boss of The Recording Academy and the Grammys – has admitted that dealing with the technology is the “toughest part” of his job.

Mason’s comments were made in a new interview with Billboard, where he admitted that while the Academy is still “trying to figure out where is the best place to sit” in regard to the matter, usage of AI technology has become widespread solely based on his own experiences.

“It runs the gamut of people texting lyrics or ideas or how they feel when they wake up and generating an entire track, lyrics and melody from it,” he says of how the technology is being used.

“That’s the far end of the spectrum. The other side of the spectrum is somebody who has just produced an entire song, but they can’t figure out the bridge section, or they can’t figure out one line, or they can’t figure out a melody to finish the chorus, and they ask one of the platforms to create that as a way to supplement what they’ve already done. That’s the other end of the spectrum. Everything in between is what I’m seeing in the studio.

“I’ve seen people having one of the platforms writing lyrics after they’ve already played all the chords, or taking lyrics that have been generated and building songs around that, or having AI vocals on a song that you wrote because you can’t sing,” he continues.

“I know one person who writes on acoustic guitar and whistles the melodies and puts that into one of the models, and the model spits out songs. I know another person who’s a poet and they put that into the model, and it spits out a fully produced demo. It’s all over the map.”

While Mason does admit that some professionals are using it either “as a tool,” “as inspiration,” or as a “launch point” when they find themselves stuck and not blindly utilising the technological output, his comments do come at a prescient time.

As platforms like Spotify have come out to outline their stance on the use of generative AI on the service, organisations such as APRA AMCOS have criticised the very notion of AI being trained on copyrighted local music.

More recently, we’ve seen UK artist HAVEN. have his song I Run removed from streaming services after allegations that the vocals used in the song were AI. Though this was officially unproven, it harkens back to the 2023 song Heart On My Sleeve, which was released by TikTok producer Ghostwriter977 and utilised AI-filtered vocals designed to sound like Drake and The Weeknd.

The track was ultimately removed from streaming services, and at the time, Mason originally noted that the song was “absolutely eligible [for Grammy consideration] because it was written by a human,” though later clarified that his stance was actually the opposite.

“Let me be extra, extra clear, even though it was written by a human creator, the vocals were not legally obtained, the vocals were not cleared by the label or the artists and the song is not commercially available and because of that, it’s not eligible,” he explained.

In his recent interview with Billboard, Mason confirmed that the usage of AI does not automatically exclude Grammy eligibility, but rather sparks discussion about the correct category in which it needs to be listed.

“Something can still be nominated in a performance category [if] AI created [it] or wrote the music and a human sang it,” he explained. “Using AI does not make your entry ineligible. It just makes you have to choose the right categories to be considered in.”

However, he did clarify that tactics such as deepfaking artists’ voices – in the case of Heart On My Sleeve – is cause for ineligibility.

“There are things that can disqualify a recording, absolutely,” Mason confirmed. “If you’re doing something illegal or something that affects an artist in a way that is protected, there are things that we can do to avoid that.

“But all that is starting to look really blurry and needs clarification more now than ever.”

The 2026 Grammy Awards will take place on February 1st, with both Amyl And The Sniffers and Tame Impala up for awards.