Boy George remakes ‘Karma Chameleon’ for new AI venture Artist Included
Boy George has released an AI-assisted “Karma Chameleon” remake as the flagship single for Artist Included, a new artist-owned catalog venture with BMG.
Boy George has released an AI-assisted re-recording of Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” as the flagship single for Artist Included, a new music and technology company built around artist-owned alternatives to original master recordings. The track, credited “Karma Chameleon (Artist Included),” came out on 15 June 2026 through a partnership with BMG Rights Management, timed to the singer’s 65th birthday.
Artist Included was founded by entrepreneur Paul “PK” Kemsley, Boy George’s longtime manager, and entertainment attorney and film producer Jeremy Rosen, with Planet Hollywood founder Robert Earl serving as chairman of the board. Boy George holds the role of creative director. The company’s technology partner, Syntiant, built its model from archival demos and vocal recordings that original “Karma Chameleon” producer Steve Levine had kept since the 1980s and agreed to share for training. Boy George recorded a new vocal take, which Syntiant’s tools then processed to draw the performance back toward the tone of his 1983 voice.
“Karma Chameleon” was the second single from Culture Club’s 1983 album “Colour by Numbers,” spending three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and six weeks atop the UK singles chart. The song has since passed 900 million streams on Spotify and continues to generate sync licensing income, none of which reaches Boy George directly under the terms of Culture Club’s original record deal.
Boy George Karma Chameleon: inside the AI re-recording
Kemsley says that imbalance was the direct catalyst for Artist Included. He points to a recent Virgin anniversary campaign that licensed “Karma Chameleon” for roughly four million dollars across multiple uses, with the payment going to the owners of the master recording and publishing rights. “Four million changed hands,” Kemsley says. “George didn’t get anything at all.”
Boy George describes the finished re-recording as startlingly close to the original session in an interview with Rolling Stone. “When I heard it, I was absolutely gobsmacked,” he says. “It sounds like another take from that original session.” He adds that the process gave him back a level of creative control he had lost over the decades: “It has the sound of me at 22 years old with all the experience of everything that I’ve learned.”
Robert Earl describes Artist Included as a response to the anxiety AI has caused elsewhere in entertainment. “Since AI arrived, the whole creative community has been up in arms and fearful, particularly in the movie world,” he says. “Unauthorized AI is not going to do well. I think it’s a seminal moment; it just might take a little time for people to realize.” The company positions its approach as distinct from unauthorized voice-cloning tools, describing the new “Karma Chameleon” as a new human performance by Boy George rather than a synthetic recreation of one.
For George, the appeal extends past the ownership question. “It’s hard to get excited about something that you don’t control,” he says. “This gives me an opportunity, not just me, but other artists, to have a different relationship with those songs.” Kemsley says Artist Included intends to approach other heritage acts from the 1980s and 1990s whose most valuable recordings remain controlled by record companies, positioning the model as an AI-assisted evolution of the re-recording strategy Taylor Swift used to reclaim her own catalog with the “Taylor’s Version” series.
Here is the original recording:
And this is the 2026 version.
About Boy George and Culture Club
Boy George, born George Alan O’Dowd in Bexley, England, formed Culture Club in London in 1981 alongside bassist Mikey Craig, drummer Jon Moss and guitarist Roy Hay. The band’s 1982 debut album, “Kissing to Be Clever,” produced the international hit “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.” Its 1983 follow-up, “Colour by Numbers,” included “Karma Chameleon,” written by Boy George and Jon Moss, which became the band’s best-selling single. Culture Club split in 1986 and has reunited several times since, including for the 2018 album “Life” and ongoing tour dates with its original lineup.
Side-Line covered the band’s 2016 “Live At Wembley” reunion show when it was released on various formats. Boy George has continued to record and tour as a solo artist and DJ, and in 2024 and 2025 released the “Let The Flowers Grow” duet with Peter Murphy, later issued in remixes by Juno Reactor and Delerium. Artist Included, and the re-recorded “Karma Chameleon” that launched it, marks his first venture built specifically around reclaiming ownership of his catalog through new technology.
Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
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