A Los Angeles start-up called Artist Included has launched with a plan to help veteran artists re-record their classic songs with AI-assisted vocal processing, so they own the new masters. Its first release, made with BMG, is a new version of Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" sung by Boy George, timed for his 65th birthday on June 14.
The company stresses that this is not a synthetic recording. Boy George sang the new vocal in a studio, and the AI, which the company calls artist-approved and ethical, helped finish the track rather than replacing him. The vocal technology comes from Syntiant, whose co-founder Kurt Busch sits on Artist Included's board.
The founders are Paul "PK" Kemsley, Boy George's manager, and entertainment lawyer and producer Jeremy Rosen. Seed investors include Structure Capital's Mike Walsh, Cresset's Doug Raetz and Red Light Management. Planet Hollywood founder Robert Earl chairs the board. Kemsley said the venture would return long-term value to the artists behind the original hits, and argued that responsible AI could become one of the strongest creative tools music has had. Rosen said artists should control, and share directly in, the future value of their music, voice, brand and legacy, and called it a move from piracy to partnership. Boy George said revisiting the song was an emotional and inspiring experience, and that the aim was to celebrate it for new listeners, not replace the original.
More releases are planned with acts from the 1960s to the 2000s. The new masters are aimed at streaming, sync, film and TV, advertising, games, brand deals, vinyl, direct-to-fan campaigns, foreign-language versions and remixes. More partnerships are due in the coming months. MBW compared the launch to other artist-controlled AI projects: Spotify and Universal's deals for fan-made AI covers and remixes, Universal's 2024 SoundLabs voice-model plug-in, and BeatStars buying Lemonaide AI. In February, Spotify co-CEO Gustav Soderstrom had called AI derivatives of existing songs an untapped way for artists to earn from their catalogues, provided they were built with artists' support.
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