Our Values

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Why talk about Values?

We encourage a Contest which is fair for all: for the musicians, AI researchers, developers, and anyone else who is drawn by the possibilities of AI. Therefore, we promote practices which ensure that the interests and rights of original creators’ are fully respected.

What are our values?

01 Human-driven creativity (still) remains at the center of what we evaluate.

AI has unlocked exciting new forms of music making, providing time-saving production tools, many more compositional options, and a host of unique new sounds.

At the same time, we are most interested in the experiences of the music maker — that's you!

Since its beginning, the stories surrounding the creation of a song with AI have taken the main stage at the AI Song Contest: in other words, we are interested in finding out about the very "human" experiences of trying (and failing) at using new tools, experimenting with new genres, obtaining (and dealing with) surprising results, and overcoming creative obstacles along the way. To us, these qualities best showcase the role of AI as a creative partner rather than a technology aimed at reducing (or eliminating) the role of the human creator from music.

In rewarding human-centered creativity, we want to ensure a future place for human creators in music — no matter how technology may evolve.

02 We believe that artists should be able to choose whether their works are used to train AI models, and under what terms.

Without the musicians that have passed through time, we would not be at this critical stage in the emergence of AI in music. In our view, the best way to sustain human creativity for the future is to ensure that the use of creators' works to train AI has been permitted, and in some cases, remunerated.

We believe in ethical data sourcing practices in AI development. That's why we encourage the use of AI tools where musicians have permitted or licensed the use of their works to develop the model, and/or where AI developers are fully transparent in the data they have used for developing their models.

Click here for a (growing!) list of services which we have identified as abiding by these values, and which are permitted to use for the contest. In case of doubt, feel free to reach out to our AISC Team.

List of Fair AI Tools

03 We want to educate creators on the ethics surrounding the use of AI, and provide a platform for dialogues on these important issues.

One of our goals every year in the AI Song Contest is to create a platform for communicating creators' issues and discussing what it means to create in an AI age.

To promote this goal, our "process document" -- which asks teams questions related to their creative process -- was created in order to provide an entry point for our contestants to reflect on, among other factors, the ethics of their own creative practices. In some cases, this document has been used as a basis to start a dialogue with our judges on particular aspects of the song creation process using AI.

Last year, we also introduced "AI Song Sessions", where creators can gather online or in-person to test out new AI song creation tools and discuss together some of the issues concerning the song creation process.

What’s next for the AI Song Contest?

AI has proven to be a truly transformative technology. There are significant risks and concerns that still need to be addressed, but there are also wholly new reactive opportunities. From the ability to separate instruments out of a full song, to lyrical assistants, to completely new sonic palettes and genre mashing, the avenues for creativity in the AI space are vast.

With our foundational values of transparency and education, we strive to be the place where AI can truly be explored as a creative partner in an ethical way..

Our foundation believes that artists who are experimenting with this technology deserve a worthy platform to highlight their creative effort, a network to collaborate and support each other, and opportunities such as our Contest stage to showcase their work to the world.

Evaluation

The AI Song Contest is a pioneer in developing a unique approach to evaluating songs created through human-AI co-creative processes: we don’t just consider the song, but rather the entire process behind creating the song. We focus on evaluating the strength of the artistic vision, the creativity in the use of AI, the AI models used, sourcing of the training data, and the contestant’s own consideration of ethical and cultural issues.

We have also integrated a flagging system for detecting potential copyright infringements or other issues with entries. Introduced in 2023, this system is designed to trigger discussions with teams and increase transparency regarding the use of copyrighted materials in the song creation process.

Our organizational team has over 50 cumulative years of experience in the academic and legal spaces which span AI and music (Music Information Retrieval, Music Theory, Ethnomusicology, Human AI Interaction, and Copyright Law). Additionally, we’ve assembled a worldwide jury consisting of renowned academics and music practitioners, including those from MIT, Harvard, Amsterdam Music Lab, Berklee College of Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Sony CSL, and more.