{"id":79919,"date":"2026-06-19T22:49:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T22:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/79919\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T22:49:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T22:49:12","slug":"boy-george-reworks-karma-chameleon-with-artist-included-ethical-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/79919\/","title":{"rendered":"Boy George Reworks ‘Karma Chameleon’ With Artist Included ‘Ethical’ AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Boy<\/a><\/p>\n

When Boy George first played his Culture Club<\/a> bandmates a country-tinged hook of the song he was certain would go to No. 1, they told him it was \u201cthe worst idea ever.\u201d He says he threatened to leave the band if it didn\u2019t make the album, \u201cabsolutely convinced based on zero evidence that this song was going to be No. 1.\u201d But he was right. \u201cKarma Chameleon\u201d made its way as the second single off 1983\u2019s soul-steeped Colour by Numbers to spend three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and six weeks atop the U.K. singles chart. Today, the record has earned more than 900 million streams on Spotify<\/a> alone while still commanding multi-million-dollar sync fees.<\/p>\n

More than 40 years later, Boy George is once again championing an idea a lot of people find hard to swallow.<\/p>\n

Timed to the singer\u2019s 65th birthday, a new, AI<\/a>-assisted version of \u201cKarma Chameleon\u201d is returning to the pop market as the flagship release for Artist Included, a new artist-first music and technology company that wants to use AI to put artists back in control of their own catalogs. Founded by entrepreneur Paul \u201cPK\u201d Kemsley and entertainment attorney and film producer Jeremy Rosen, with Planet Hollywood founder Robert Earl as Chairman of the Board, the company is built around a seemingly simple angle: artificial intelligence is not replacing artists, but working with them \u2014 and, ideally, earning them more money.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince AI arrived, the whole creative community has been up in arms and fearful, particularly in the movie world,\u201d Earl shares in a sit-down with George amid a busy New York promotional schedule alongside his business collaborators. \u201cEveryone\u2019s been waiting to see how it was going to impact the music side\u2026unauthorized AI is not going to do well. I think it\u2019s a seminal moment; it just might take a little time for people to realize.\u201d<\/p>\n

Months ahead of the June 15 release of the \u201cKarma Chameleon (Artist Included)\u201d<\/a> single, George came to the studio to sing the hit single again, sitting with the original in a way that required him to go back to the early \u201880s. Artist Included\u2019s main technology partner, Syntiant<\/a>, uses what\u2019s described as \u201cartist-approved tools\u201d to support George\u2019s vocal performance, developing its intelligence from previous demos and vocal recordings that the song\u2019s original producer, Steve Levine, had kept over the years and consented to share for training. Syntiant\u2019s tech nudges the new takes back toward the tone and feeling of the 1983 master while keeping every note authentically Boy George. \u201cIt\u2019s him singing,\u201d Earl adds, \u201cbut they managed to take all the tones and all of those emotions and got it back to where he was.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Boy George, the process was unexpectedly emotional.<\/p>\n

\u200a\u201cAs I\u2019ve got older, I have definitely become much more conscious of what I\u2019ve created,\u201d the singer-songwriter-DJ shares. \u201c\u200aFor years, I\u2019ve struggled with the nostalgia aspect of my career and keeping control over what I\u2019m doing now. I feel I\u2019ve reached a point in my life where I don\u2019t have an issue with it anymore \u2014 this is me, this is what I created, it belongs to me. I don\u2019t live in the past, but it\u2019s kind of exciting to have some say over the destiny of this very iconic piece of my history. It has been like a child I lost control of. I had no influence over what it was doing and where it appeared.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, he tells audiences on stage: \u201cI lost this kid for a few years, but he\u2019s back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Released in partnership with BMG<\/a> Rights Management, the new \u201cKarma Chameleon\u201d takes music released when Boy George was ambitious young punk singer (\u201c\u200athe idea of career was boring to me as a teenager,\u201d he says) and gives a chance at better business dealings when it comes to publishing after his original record contract has long since lapsed (\u201c\u200athe sort of deals that you do at the beginning of your career are not based on foresight, you\u2019re only grateful to get a record deal, grateful that anyone wants to put you on TV\u201d).<\/p>\n

That sense of reclamation is central to the company\u2019s business model, with the \u201cKarma Chameleon\u201d release, as well as Boy George\u2019s creative comfort with it, serving as the first test.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt needs a champion,\u201d Earl adds. \u201cIt needs verification. There are so many different boxes and we\u2019ve started to tick them, \u200abut for the talent, for their management, for everyone involved to protect them, this will be the first test. Seeing how George is so comfortable with it, we\u2019ve got lots of people that are targets that we\u2019ve started discussions with their management, the lawyers, business managers, the talent themselves, the publishers.\u201d<\/p>\n

For artists whose recording deals have expired, Artist Included offers a way to create new, artist-owned masters and chase the long-term value that has long drifted away from the people who made the music.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Kemsley pointed to Virgin Voyages\u2019 $4 million deal to license \u201cKarma Chameleon,\u201d<\/a> in which about $2 million went to the owners of the master recording, and George, who has no ownership of his biggest song, received an appearance fee. \u201cFor decades, artists created the soundtrack to our lives while much of the long-term value moved away from the original creators,\u201d Kemsley told the publication. \u201cUsed responsibly, AI can become one of the most powerful creative tools the music industry has ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the word \u201cAI\u201d still makes creatives flinch, you\u2019re not alone \u2014 and Boy George knows the feeling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen PK said we\u2019re going to do this, I was like, \u2018Wow, can you do it? Is it even possible?\u2019\u201d He says. \u201cI was not quite against it, but I didn\u2019t believe it was possible.\u201d His skepticism is enlightening, as few artists feel better positioned to discuss the gap between what looks threatening and what turns out to be liberating. After all, Boy George is the performer who arrived in the early ’80s in a swirl of makeup, ribbons and gender-blurring style that a lot of the culture found genuinely alarming when visible, joyful androgyny read as provocation to the status quo.<\/p>\n

Boy George hears a similar panic in the AI conversation now, but pushes back on the idea that any of this is brand new. \u201cYou could argue that the drum machine was a form of AI,\u201d he offers. \u201cIt was just a different, more primitive version of it. Particularly in dance music, which I\u2019ve been involved in for a long time, some of this technology was already being used\u2026so what this has done is sped-up. It\u2019s like the new iPhone \u2014 there\u2019s always an update of an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Real anxieties around AI \u2014 its environmental toll, its effect on attention and mental health, the livelihoods it stands to upend \u2014 aren\u2019t waved away by a warmer-sounding “Karma Chameleon,” and Earl doesn\u2019t pretend otherwise. “On the job side, it\u2019s going to destroy things,” he says, floating that a three-day work week will soon become the norm. Artist Included argues that the same technology can be pointed backward, to right an industry\u2019s old wrongs and return ownership and income to artists never built into the deal. Earl adds how when a track gets placed in \u201ca sync for an ad or a movie score, the artist is going to now feel very personally involved” \u2014 and motivated to promote it, rather than watching it drift by as lost income. The model\u2019s pitch is built on consent, transparency, rights clearance, and creator participation to attempt to make AI additive rather than extractive.<\/p>\n

George already uses AI as a creative sparring partner. While the likes of ChatGPT rarely hands him lyrics he keeps, he says it does something subtler: \u201cWhat it can do is make you go, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve got a better line,\u2019\u201d not unlike cracking open a thesaurus or rhyming dictionary when one\u2019s stuck for a word.<\/p>\n

Boy Georges and Culture Club, circa 1980. (Photo by \u00a9 DENIZE ALAIN\/CORBIS KIPA\/Sygma via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Sygma via Getty Images<\/p>\n

SARATOGA, CA – AUGUST 15: Boy George (C) and Culture Club perform at The Mountain Winery on August 15, 2016 in Saratoga, California. (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Getty Images<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a satisfying final note in officially launching Artist Included with “Karma Chameleon.” A practicing Buddhist, Boy George is quick to note that Buddhism doesn\u2019t define karma as mean-spirited cosmic punishment. \u201cIt means action,\u201d he says, \u201cThe choices you make create the heaven and hell you\u2019re living.\u201d A song he once couldn\u2019t control becomes a deliberate act of reclamation thanks to a bold new venture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there was a certain point where I realized I was the only one who realized the ’80s were over,\u201d George says, laughing at himself. He\u2019s made peace with the time and with the evolving life of a song that defined it.<\/p>\n

As Earl puts it, the Artist Included venture with Boy George and future stars boils down to a single idea: \u201cWe are bringing the artists back into the party.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Boy George first played his Culture Club bandmates a country-tinged hook of the song he was certain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,28782,36171,25,43466,40977,3458,43464,43465,43463,43467],"class_list":["post-79919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-ai-interview","tag-ai-music","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artist-included","tag-culture-club","tag-ethical-ai","tag-karma-chameleon","tag-paul-pk-kemsley","tag-robert-earl","tag-syntiant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}