AI is blowing up music. How should the Grammys handle it?

The Grammy conversation is less about artistic ethics and more about rights economics: whatever eligibility and attribution standards the Recording Academy codifies will directly shape how streaming royalties, publishing splits, and performance rights are assigned when AI is in the creative chain. The institution setting that precedent first gains outsized influence over the entire music IP stack.

None of the related Modelwire coverage from this week maps directly onto music rights, but the governance thread running through Import AI 459 (on AI oversight difficulty and the gap between capability scaling and institutional readiness) is the right conceptual frame here. The Recording Academy faces the same core problem that Import AI surfaces for labs and policymakers: accountability infrastructure is being built reactively, after capabilities have already outpaced the rules. SoftBank's $87.3B infrastructure commitment to France also signals that AI-generated content will scale in volume well before any single institution can establish durable standards, which raises the stakes for whoever moves first.

Watch whether the Recording Academy publishes formal eligibility criteria before the 2027 nominations cycle opens. If they do, the specific language around 'human authorship thresholds' will signal whether the framework is designed to protect incumbent rights holders or to accommodate hybrid AI-human workflows at scale.