Boy George has revealed that he uses AI to enhance his songwriting. During a taping for the podcast Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place, the Culture Club singer shared that he’s used ChatGPT to write multiple albums, and acknowledges he feels as though the OpenAI chatbot has “really helped me as a lyricist.”
“I’ve written like, five albums already with AI,” Boy George said on the March 2nd episode of the podcast. “AI is brilliant. Nothing to fear… I say to everyone, if you get replaced by a robot, you weren’t trying hard enough… Obviously, I care about people losing their jobs… But there’s so many great things.”
The artist pointed to his recent song, “I Am Iran,” as an example of helpful AI usage. “Obviously, I don’t sing in Persian,” he said. “I don’t write as a Persian because obviously I’m not, so I write in a way that’s very British, and it translates so interestingly into Persian.”
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Regardless of how others feel about the use of AI in songwriting, Boy George is comfortable with his usage of ChatGPT.
“I have fantastic conversations with ChatGPT, and I’ll say, ‘Oh that [lyric is] crap, that’s not what I would say,’” he told Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place. “You can train it. And my manager last night was saying, ‘You know you’re talking to someone in China.’ I was like, ‘I couldn’t care less.’ I said, ‘It doesn’t matter…’ An artist like me, they try to force you to work in an old-fashioned way. I’m ahead of them.” Watch the full episode below.
While artists like Teddy Swims and ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus have also admitted to using AI, many in the industry are decrying the use of the tool in music.
SZA recently told i-D Magazine that she felt like she was “at war because of AI.” “It’s happening disproportionately with Black music,” she continues. “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.”
“I’m not up against the pop girls,” she explained further. “I’m not up against the R&B girls. I’m up against anti-intellectualism and doing things easy. The type of blend of information my human experience provides, AI can’t even be prompted to fuck with. I want to just let this angst drive me into bizarre directions.”
Other artists, including fellow R&B singer Kehlani, agree with SZA’s assessment. In 2024, Billie Eilish, Greta Van Fleet, and Pearl Jam, among 200+ others, signed an open letter focused on combatting the rise of AI in music.
Boy George is currently on a US tour with Culture Club, including an upcoming residency at The Venetian Theatre in Las Vegas. Get tickets here.
