Boy George has said that using AI to pen new music has changed his approach to songwriting.
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During a recent appearance on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast, he said that the “practice has really helped me as a lyricist”, noting that much of the enjoyment he draws from using it comes from the independence of the process.
“You’re not working with anyone else,” he explained. “You don’t have to worry even for two seconds about what they think. I’m a top-line writer, so I write top-line melodies. All the people I work with send me tracks, and I’ll just sit with them, and I’ll just play it and play it.”
“I have fantastic conversations with ChatGPT,” he added. “And I’ll say: ‘Oh, those lyrics are crap. That’s not what I would say.’ You know what I mean? But, actually, you can train it.”
Last year, the musician used AI to re-record vocals for some of his biggest tracks, including 1983 hit ‘Karma Chameleon’.
It follows a consistent period of controversy surrounding the increased use of AI in creative fields, with many people now unable to detect it’s presence. For instance, Apple Music will now let users know if they are listening to music that was made using the technology, following a study last year that revealed that 97 per cent of people “can’t tell the difference” between real and AI music.
Before then, figures in 2024 warned that people working in music were likely to lose a quarter of their income to AI over the following four years.
As well as Apple, Deezer has also tackled the rise of AI-generated content – which it said in September made up 28 per cent of content on the platform – sharing that it had demonetised 85 per cent of all AI-generated tracks on its site using an AI-detection tool.
Bandcamp has banned all AI-created tracks too, saying: “We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI-generated.”
Last year, Spotify confirmed that it was cracking down on AI as well, and removing 75million “spammy tracks” and targeting impersonators. That statement followed a report which claimed that AI-generated songs were being uploaded to dead musicians’ Spotify profiles without permission.
Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and Elton John are among the major British artists to have urged Keir Starmer to protect the work of creatives, and the Prime Minister told NME in 2025 that the government were working to “get the balance right.”
Earlier this week, SZA said she feels “at war” with the technology as a Black artist. “It’s happening disproportionately with Black music,” she said. “Why am I hearing AI covers of Olivia Dean, when Olivia Dean just came the fuck out? She can’t even collect the streams. I’m also really offended by the type of Black music that’s coming out of AI. Weird, stereotypical struggle music.”
