By Braden Bjella
The Future Sound Awards team says that they hope to demonstrate AI’s creative potential in music. But what potential is there?
How is the music industry utilizing AI in 2025?
The use of artificial intelligence in creative fields is controversial. Some have resisted the technology and spoken out against it; for example, in February 2025, over 1,000 musicians released a silent album to protest A.I. being trained on their work, and a major part of the recent SAG-AFTRA strike involved negotiations over how A.I. will be used in the film industry going forward.
Others, however, have fully embraced it. For example, Electronic musician Toro y Moi recently performed at Google’s I/O conference with a set powered by artificial intelligence, telling the audience, “Music is going towards AI with or without me, and it’s my responsibility as an artist to keep up.” Additionally, A.I.-powered rock band The Velvet Sundown has accumulated over 500 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify, though their rise has been ripe with controversy.
However, given how unsure the industry presently is about the use of AI in music, it’s unlikely that any fully AI-generated work will be able to enter mainstream awards like the Grammys or Academy Awards anytime soon.
Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, recently had to clarify the place of AI in their assessments, saying, “If there’s AI performing the song, but there’s humans writing it, then it’s eligible for a writing category. If AI wrote the song but a human singer…is singing the song, then it’s going to be eligible for a performance category.”
While the Grammys may be reluctant to embrace AI, there’s a new award program that’s exploring the idea more in-depth.
What are the Future Sound Awards?
Earlier this week, the Future Sound Awards announced their upcoming competition in partnership with TwoShot, a service that allows users to make music using a fully traceable, rights-cleared audio library.
Competitors will make a song using Artificial Intelligence, then submit that song to a panel of judges free of charge. Entries will be judged on similar criteria to other major music competitions: inspiration, vocals, lyrics, process, and more. Copyrighted music can not be used in the creation of this music.
“I’ll be looking for lyrical content, something that is not just from ChatGPT, something that has been edited and has a bit more human flavor to it,” contest judge Jeff Nang told Forbes. “Even though it’s an AI project, I still believe that it benefits from the human touch.”
What’s in it for winners?
The awards themselves are backed by the World AI Creator Awards, a larger competition celebrating AI-driven creativity, which is itself organized by Fanvue, a subscription platform featuring virtual models, athletes, DJs, and more.
This means that, according to the awards’ website, winners will receive both financial and career benefits. First place will receive $7,000, second and third places will receive $1,500 each, and all creators involved “will have a chance to raise their profile and network with our esteemed panel of judges.”
By creating this competition, the team behind the Future Sound Awards say they hope to demonstrate AI’s creative potential in music and highlight how it can be used responsibly throughout the industry.
“[The Future Sound Awards are a] true celebration of the democratization of music, and we have big ambitions to grow the awards into the Grammys of the AI music space,” Narcis Marincat, head of AI at Fanvue, explained in a statement.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.