Nova Armonia, AI Music Festival San Marino

The Festival Charter

Five principles.
A clear stance.

Generative AI applied to music opens up possibilities once unthinkable and raises complex questions: authorship, copyright, the data these systems are trained on, the future of those who make a living from music. This festival is founded on the conviction that such questions should not be avoided, but set out and discussed in public, together with those who greet them with enthusiasm and those who experience them as a threat.

01

Transparency

Every author honestly declares the tools used and their own contribution. The process sheet is an integral part of the work: not proof of how much was done by hand, but a conscious account of how the track came to be.

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What it means

Whoever submits a track tells us how they made it: which tools they used, what they asked the machine for, what they chose, discarded, rewrote. There is no minimum amount of human input to prove. A track born from a single prompt is as welcome as one born from fifty attempts: what we ask is that the account be true.

Why

With generative AI, listening alone is no longer enough to understand how a song came to be. If the process stays hidden, the audience does not know what it is applauding and the jury does not know what it is rewarding. Silence breeds suspicion: about the work, about the author, about the whole language. Telling the story of the process is the simplest way to restore trust. And it is often the most interesting part of the work: the idea it started from, the machine’s mistake kept because it sounded better, the verse rewritten by hand.

In practice

Every application includes a process sheet (idea, tools, human role, choices and discards) and a transparency declaration. Filling them in truthfully is a condition of admission, and a false statement can lead to exclusion even after the awards. On the night of the final, every track is presented together with its process, and the Creative Transparency Award recognises whoever tells it with the most truth and clarity.

Reference

The law is moving in the same direction. In the European Union, since 2 August 2026, the AI Act requires providers of generative systems to mark the audio, video, image and text content they produce so that it can be detected as artificially generated (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Art. 50). A label says that AI is involved. The process sheet tells how and why.

02

Human centrality

The festival rewards human artistic direction, not automated generation for its own sake. One question guides everything: what makes the track yours?

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What it means

At the centre of the festival is not the machine, but the person using it. We ask every author a single question: what makes this track yours? It might be the starting idea, lyrics you wrote yourself, a precise aesthetic direction, the patience to pick the right one out of a hundred versions, or the courage to throw them all away and start again.

Why

Today generating a song takes a few seconds. That is exactly why value shifts: it no longer lies in the ability to produce sound, but in the decisions that turn it into a work. AI does not remove the need for skill, it calls for new skills: shaping an intention, recognising what works, holding a dialogue with a tool that sometimes surprises and sometimes gets it wrong. These are the skills the festival wants to show and reward.

In practice

The awards do not measure musical quality alone, but the forms of contemporary authorship: Best Artistic Idea, Best Human-Machine Dialogue, Best Narrative Use of AI. The jury assesses each track together with the process that brought it to life.

Works of the human intellect of a creative character […] are protected under this law, including where created with the aid of artificial intelligence tools, provided they are the result of the author’s intellectual work.
Italian Copyright Law (Law 633/1941), Art. 1, as amended by Law 132/2025 (our translation)

In the United States the Copyright Office reached a similar conclusion (report of January 2025): prompts alone are not enough to make someone the author; what counts is human control over the expressive elements of the work.

03

Respect for artists

No deceptive imitations of living artists, no recognisable voices used without authorisation, no protected works without consent. The most uncomfortable question remains: what music these systems are trained on, and what they owe to those who wrote it. No author can answer for the tools they use, and often not even those who build them disclose it. The festival commits not to avoid the question, but to bring it on stage.

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What it means

We do not accept tracks built to pass as the work of a living artist, recognisable voices used without permission, or protected lyrics, melodies or samples taken without the consent of the rights holders. Drawing on a style, a genre, an era is perfectly fine: that is how music has always moved forward. Passing yourself off as someone else is not.

Why

A voice is part of a person’s identity, not a timbre to be copied. And behind every song there is the work, often the craft and the livelihood, of whoever wrote and played it. Generative tools open up enormous possibilities, but they also make imitation effortless. The line between homage and appropriation runs through consent. A festival that wants to make room for generative music cannot do so at the expense of those who already make music.

The open question

Then there is a question no set of rules can settle: what music these tools were trained on, and what they owe to those who wrote it. In 2024 tens of thousands of creators, including musicians such as Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, signed the Statement on AI training against the unlicensed use of their works. Whoever submits a track cannot answer for the tools they use: that is why the festival does not close the question, but brings it on stage.

In practice

The rules exclude tracks that deceptively imitate living artists, use recognisable voices without authorisation or protected works without consent. Whoever submits a track guarantees that they hold the rights and comply with the terms of use of the AI tools they used. If any of these conditions fails, the track is excluded, even after the awards.

One way that I like to think about intellectual property I call identity play. So rather than limiting the use of my voice, I’m creating instruments to allow as many people as possible to create music with me, and even as me.
Holly Herndon, composer, TED2022

With Holly+, Herndon made a model of her own voice available to others, with her consent and with clear rules. Respecting artists does not mean shutting the door: it means the artist decides.

04

Experimentation

AI is treated as a new language, not a production shortcut. We welcome experiments that look for something not banal: impossible voices, unexpected hybrids, errors that become form.

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What it means

For us AI is a new language, not a shortcut to churn out songs faster. We are looking for tracks that try to do something that could not be done before: impossible voices, genres meeting for the first time, new compositional processes, machine errors that become an expressive choice.

Why

At first every new instrument is used to imitate what came before: photography imitated painting, early synthesizers imitated acoustic instruments. Then someone started using them for what only they could do, and that is where something new was born. With AI the risk is stopping at the first stage: lots of songs that are correct and all alike. A festival in its first edition has the task of pushing a little further.

In practice

A well-made pop song is not worth less because it is pop. But when quality is equal, the jury gives added value to those who explore less travelled ground. In the process sheet it is worth describing the attempts, the discards and the accidents you decided to keep.

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. […] The distorted guitar is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it.
Brian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices (1996)
05

Educating the audience

The festival does not speak only to insiders. Talks, workshops and masterclasses are not an add-on: they are an essential part of the project. A cultural event leaves those who take part with a new way of thinking.

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What it means

The festival does not speak only to musicians, technicians and enthusiasts. It wants anyone who walks into the hall, a student, a teacher, a family, someone working in public institutions, to leave with a slightly better understanding of how music is changing, and with a few more tools to judge it for themselves.

Why

Generative AI is finding its way into the music we listen to every day, often without our noticing. The questions it raises (who the author is, what is fair, what has value) do not concern insiders alone: they concern everyone. Leaving them to technical debate or to marketing means being subject to them. A cultural event has the task of opening them up in public, without easy enthusiasm and without fear.

In practice

Every finalist track is presented with the story of its process, so the audience listens and understands at the same time. The day after the final, Saturday 30 January at 5 pm, the Auditorium hosts a public round table, “Who is the author? Music and artificial intelligence, today and tomorrow”: a conversation between different points of view, not a debate for or against. On the same day the programme includes workshops for students, a masterclass for musicians and live demos of the tools.

Reference

The European Union speaks of “AI literacy”: the skills and understanding needed to “gain awareness about the opportunities and risks of AI” (AI Act, Art. 3(56)). The law requires it of those who develop and use these systems. We think it matters just as much for those who listen to the music.

A cultural event is not one merely because it hosts works; it is one because it leaves those who take part with a capacity for thought they did not have before.
From the Festival Charter

Application

The principles live in three distinct moments.

01

At the application stage

Through the rules and the process sheet. Filling in the sheet truthfully is a condition for admission to the contest.

02

At the selection stage

Through the jury’s criteria, which weigh not only the musical quality of the track but also its consistency with the principles of the Charter.

03

At the event stage

Through the way each track is presented: with its process, the jurors’ reflections, the cultural moments of the evening.

This Charter is not a manifesto against artificial intelligence, nor in its favour. It is an attempt to hold together creative enthusiasm and cultural responsibility, in the belief that the new generative music deserves a public space in which to be heard, discussed and, where appropriate, rewarded.

Festival Charter, Edition Zero