At a glance
- The threshold: Musical work must meet VH3 (Human-Led, AI-Assisted) or above to carry the VerifiedHuman mark.
- The question: Who composed it? Consider who selected and arranged the notes, sounds, and beats.
- Production assistance: Pitch correction, timing, mixing, mastering, effects, and lyric prompts can support human composition.
- AI-generated material: Melodies, rhythms, or loops must be substantially transformed. Unchanged sequences or minor edits do not qualify.
- The Five-Note/Five-Beat Principle: Use recognizable sequences as a gut-check on who composed the material.
- Credits and uncertainty: Describe what people and AI contributed. Add AIU (AI-Unknown) when source material’s origin is unclear.
Essential Composition
Music takes shape when someone selects and arranges notes, sounds, and beats. Those choices form melodies, rhythms, songs, and the smaller sequences within them.
Essential composition asks who made those musical choices. The work may be sung, played on an instrument, sampled, or built by layering sounds.
Who composed it? Apply that question to a whole score or song and to its individual parts. When a person puts the musical elements together, that person is the essential composer. When AI supplies those choices, the resulting sequence began as AI composition.
Back to topThe Five-Note/Five-Beat Principle
When working with AI-generated music, listen for sequences you carry into the final work unchanged.
If AI selected five consecutive notes or five distinctive beats that remain unchanged, that is a sign you may not have transformed the material. Five is enough to draw attention to a recognizable sequence. It is a gut-check, not a percentage test.
Examine the musical choices in that passage. Copying a sequence is different from composing one, and minor adjustments do not settle authorship.
Did you compose it, or did AI compose it?
Back to topDescribe the work clearly
Name the human creators and their essential roles. Then explain specifically what AI generated, transformed, repaired, separated, recommended, or automated. Say when a source is uncertain.
Distinguish a human composition or performance processed with AI from music or performance generated by a system. Listeners should be able to understand what happened.
Put the explanation where listeners can find it
Use the credits, liner notes, release notes, description, or a linked page for the work. Embedded metadata and Content Credentials can reinforce that account, but platforms may remove them. They should not be the only place the explanation appears.
A watermark may indicate that a system touched a file. It does not, by itself, explain who composed or performed the music.
If the work qualifies, you may also put its designation, such as VerifiedHuman™ — VH3, in the file’s comment field as supplemental metadata.
An example credit
Back to topWritten and performed by Mara Lee. AI-assisted stem separation and noise repair were used during mixing; no vocal or instrumental performance was generated.
When the source is uncertain
Sounds, tracks, loops, rhythms, and samples sometimes have an unclear history. You may know little about their source or suspect AI involvement without knowing its extent.
When the human or AI origin of material you use is uncertain, add AIU (AI-Unknown) to your VH level, for example, VH4-AIU. Explain the uncertainty in your account of the work and continue to assess your own composition under the standard.
Back to topGo deeper.
Open the explanations, examples, and terms you need.
Human composition and AI
The human role behind the standard.
Listeners deserve to know who composed the music they hear. VerifiedHuman certifies human composition through a shared standard and the musician’s commitment to it.
Production tools can shape a recording in many ways. The standard keeps the authorship of the music in view while allowing tools to support the process.
Musicians are free to experiment with generated sounds and recombined material. A piece may fall outside the standard while another qualifies. Use the mark on work that meets the standard.
Back to topWhich level describes your work?
From entirely AI-generated to entirely human.
The Human–AI Spectrum has five levels. Musical work at VH3, VH4, or VH5 qualifies for the VerifiedHuman mark.
VH5 · Entirely Human-Composed
- You select and arrange all notes, sounds, and beats without generative AI.
- Traditional pitch correction, timing, mixing, mastering, and effects are fine.
- The music reflects your creativity, expression, and artistic decisions.
VH4 · Human-Composed, AI-Enhanced
- You select and arrange all musical elements.
- Generative AI may help with lyric prompts, research, references, and technical documentation.
- AI supports the workflow without generating the musical content you present as your composition.
VH3 · Human-Led, AI-Assisted
- You lead the creative process and substantially transform any AI-generated musical material you use.
- AI may supply melodies, rhythms, loops, or variations. Your contribution must go beyond minor edits.
- The finished music reflects your artistic choices. Use the Five-Note/Five-Beat Principle to examine sequences carried into the work.
Work below VH3 does not qualify for the VerifiedHuman mark.
See the complete Human–AI Spectrum
Back to topUsing AI in your music
How the standard applies to AI assistance.
You are responsible for judging whether your work meets the standard. Consider who composed the essential musical material and how you used any generated output.
Listening for inspiration
You may listen to AI-generated ideas, then compose from scratch. If you select and arrange the musical elements yourself, you have supplied the composition.
Transforming a generated sequence
An AI-generated melody can be a starting point, but the transformation must be substantial. Ask what you changed in the musical expression and who composed the resulting material.
This needs judgment. Cosmetic adjustments do not establish composition, and a percentage of changes does not settle the question. Use the Five-Note/Five-Beat Principle to examine the sequences you retain.
Making minor edits
An AI-generated sequence with small adjustments does not qualify as your composition. If AI selected and arranged the essential notes or beats and those choices remain essentially intact, AI composed that material.
Back to topAI assistance in practice
A closer look at a real creative decision.
An electronic track
James creates an electronic dance track. He uses AI for songwriting prompts, vocal pitch correction, mixing, mastering, and production effects.
He composes every melody, bassline, drum pattern, and chord progression himself.
This is VH4: Human-Composed, AI-Enhanced. AI helped with ideas and production. James selected and arranged the musical elements.
Back to topTerms used in the standard
The language used in the commitment.
- Musician
- A composer or performer of musical work.
- Musical work
- Musical elements selected and arranged into compositions that can be sung, put to words, played, or sampled.
- Essentially composed
- Composed through a person’s selection and arrangement of musical elements. The central question is: Who composed it?
- Essential musical elements
- Notes, sounds, and beats, heard as songs, melodies, rhythms, or parts of them.
- Music generation model
- An AI system trained on music that generates new audio content in response to prompts.
- Beat
- A recurring pulse that marks time in music.
- Note
- A musical sound with a pitch and duration.
- Standard
- A statement of commitment to specific creative practices.
- Represent
- Claim, present, or share work as your own.
- Team
- A group of people working together.
- Intellectual property
- Creative work to which someone has legal rights, such as copyright or trademark.
- Essential
- The fundamental elements or characteristics of something.
- Human
- A person, or something originating from a person.
- Generative AI
- AI systems trained on existing content that generate new text, images, audio, code, or video in response to prompts.
- Machine learning
- Algorithms that learn from data to make predictions or generate content.
- Other generative processes
- Other AI or machine-learning processes that create new content.
- Artificial intelligence (AI)
- A field of computer science concerned with systems that perform tasks such as learning, reasoning, and generating content.
- AIU (AI-Unknown)
- A tag added to a VH level when the human or AI origin of source material is uncertain.