Songs that are wholly or largely created by generative A.I. will be banned from Australia’s music charts under new rules announced on Tuesday, but recordings that use the technology in a supporting role will still be allowed.
The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), which oversees the charts of the country’s most popular music, said the changes will apply from Friday.
The move follows a global push by the music industry and authorities to create clearer regulation around A.I. use in music and ensure appropriate copyright protections for original artists.
ARIA’s chief executive officer, Annabelle Herd, said the music charts should reflect what Australians are listening to, but a chart that rewarded A.I. output would “undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent.”
Many artists use A.I. tools, and music charts should “keep room for that,” Ms. Herd said in a statement released by ARIA. “But music generated wholesale by services built on artists’ recordings is a different matter.”
Under the changes, recordings developed using generative A.I. will only be allowed if they are “substantially human-made” and do not raise “stream or chart manipulation concerns,” the statement said.
For example, if a song’s lead vocal or key instrumental performance is generated by A.I., the track would be ineligible, ARIA said. But a human lead vocal with A.I. backing vocals would be allowed.
Under the rules, ARIA may remove a recording from the charts if it is deemed ineligible, although artists will be allowed to appeal the decision. A.I.-generated recordings will also not qualify for the ARIA Awards — the country’s top music industry prize.
The Australian musician Ben Lee, who is known for hits like “Cigarettes Will Kill You” and “Catch My Disease,” said non-generative A.I. was used by artists in the process of music production, including for pitch correction and noise reduction. But generative A.I. and its impacts on the industry needed to be looked at more closely, he said.
“I’m not the kind of person who is at all fundamentally opposed to technological changes in my industry,” he said. “It feels like healthy pushback is a really vital part of us looking responsibly at the way to integrate these technologies into our industries.”
“I don’t see this as the endpoint. I see this as the start of a conversation,” Mr. Lee said of the chart changes.
Alexis Weaver, a composer and lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, said ARIA’s move was a “wonderful step forward” in valuing human creativity.
The discussion about the use of A.I. in music is “exceptionally fraught and very emotional for a lot of musicians and so everyone will have a different opinion,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The changes come just months after a chart-topping cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” angered some in the music industry who believed it was produced with A.I., the network reported this year.
The song, which has been streamed more than 48 million times on Spotify, was later updated on the music platform to include A.I. credits, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Oliver Bown, a University of New South Wales professor studying the impacts of A.I. on the creative industries, said ARIA was the latest in a long line of organizations to develop policies banning some level of A.I.
“Everyone’s watching everyone else,” he said, pointing to governments, record labels and various music bodies across the world.
For example, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry worldwide, released a set of principles around generative A.I. use and chart eligibility in June. Songs that were wholly generated by A.I. were banned from charts that the federation oversees in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. ARIA’s changes are based on the foundation’s principles.
British actors, musicians and writers welcomed the government’s decision this year to abandon its plans to let A.I. firms use copyright-protected work without permission. In the United States, a string of court cases has emerged over the misuse of A.I. and copyright.
Mr. Bown said the speed at which generative A.I. models had developed and been adopted was “unprecedented” and had sent shock waves across the broader creative industries.
But he is hopeful that the technology could also be used to create something new: “Once we establish some boundaries between ethical and unethical practices, there’s a great deal of room for people to use A.I., and to do really interesting things with it,” he said.
