Boy George has spent more than four decades singing “Karma Chameleon.” What he hasn’t spent four decades doing, he says, is controlling it.
The Culture Club frontman is launching a new venture called Artists Included that aims to give legacy artists a way to reclaim ownership of their biggest songs through AI-assisted re-recordings. The company’s first release, unveiled Monday, is a newly recorded version of “Karma Chameleon” that uses artificial intelligence to recreate George’s 22-year-old voice while preserving a performance recorded today.
Listen here.
“It’s hard to get excited about something that you don’t control,” George tells The Hollywood Reporter. “This gives me an opportunity, not just me, but other artists, to have a different relationship with those songs.”
The project arrives as the music industry continues to wrestle with AI’s implications. Labels have spent the last two years battling unauthorized voice cloning and generative music startups. George and his longtime manager Paul Kemsley, better known as PK, are attempting to flip that narrative. Their pitch is simple: What if AI could help artists reclaim value rather than strip it away?
