BMI will register songs built partly with AI tools

The tool moment

On 28 October 2025, BMI announced, alongside ASCAP and the Canadian society SOCAN, that all three performing-rights organizations had aligned policies to accept registration of compositions only partly generated using AI tools. BMI's own announcement defines a partially AI-generated musical work as one that 'combines elements of AI-generated musical content with elements of human authorship,' and states that compositions 'entirely created using AI tools are not eligible for registration with any of the individual societies.' BMI's President and CEO Mike O'Neill is quoted describing the move as protecting human creativity 'while supporting the songwriters and composers who choose to use AI as a tool to enhance their creative process.'

What the documents show

A companion page, BMI's own AI FAQ, a living document BMI says it will keep updating, sets out the standard behind the announcement: registration follows, in the page's words, 'the U.S. Copyright Office's standard of the minimum threshold for human creativity,' and a partially AI-generated work is paid the same as a human-created one once it clears that threshold. The FAQ separates categories: works assisted by AI that do not affect authorship, such as mixing plugins or noise removal, which BMI will not ask writers to disclose; works with substantial AI-generated content in a human-led process, which can be registered; and 'prompt-only' works, generated from text prompts with no human authorship added, which BMI states it does not accept. BMI also states its advocacy position that training AI on copyrighted music without permission 'is not fair use, it's theft,' a stated position in an active debate, not a ruling this note can treat as settled law.

What stays with the musician

The FAQ places the burden of classification on the songwriter: deciding whether a track is human-created-with-AI-assistance, partially AI-generated, or prompt-only determines whether it can be registered, and BMI reserves the right to remove a work later if it decides the classification was wrong. Disclosure, where AI affects authorship, is recommended rather than required, so a writer choosing not to disclose relies on their own judgment that the use need not be reported.

Judge it by listening

Nothing in BMI's registration standard is evaluated by ear; it turns on a legal test of human authorship, not sound quality. Editorially, the closest a musician can come to self-checking against this standard is describing concretely which elements, a melody, a lyric, an arrangement decision, came from their own authorship rather than a generative tool's output, since that is the distinction the Copyright Office standard BMI cites is built around.

• Can I describe which specific elements of this composition reflect my own authorship rather than an AI tool's output?
• Does this track fall into BMI's prompt-only category, which it does not currently accept for registration?
• Am I treating BMI's advocacy positions on AI training as settled law, when the FAQ frames them as BMI's position in an ongoing debate?

BMI's October 2025 alignment with ASCAP and SOCAN changes what gets registered, not who did the composing, and it leaves the harder judgment, how much of a song is genuinely human-authored, with the songwriter filing it.