KAMELOT's THOMAS YOUNGBLOOD On Artificial Intelligence: 'I Have This Weird Feeling It's Gonna Run Its Course'

In a new interview with Jorge Botas of Portugal's Metal Global, KAMELOT guitarist Thomas Youngblood weighed in on a debate about people using an A.I. (artificial intelligence) music generator as a tool to create melodies, harmonies and rhymes based on artificial intelligence (A.I.) algorithms and machine learning (M.L.) models. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I could just tell you as just a general person, I have this weird feeling it's gonna run its course, whether it's using ChatGPT to ask how to answer an interview question or whatever it might be. I hope that it runs its course where people are, like, 'Nah, this is kind of not worth it. It's not worth the resources that it takes, all these things. Let's think for ourselves. Let's continue to do things old-school way.' And, yeah, that's my hope. Is that gonna happen? I don't know. But, obviously, 30 years of a career and fourteenth album, it's not something we [in KAMELOT] would even entertain. But my hope is that the whole thing kind of runs its course and people start thinking for themselves again."

Asked by Botas if he has ever felt tempted to use A.I. to help him come up with an idea, Thomas said: "No, not at all. I mean, even with ChatGPT or things like just simple questions, I try to... The only time I've used it, I've taken all these tour dates and said, 'Make an itinerary for me.' But that's pretty much it."

Addressing the fact that ChatGPT's results are based on the large language model's predictions and past information, making it prone to errors and biases, Youngblood added: "It's a little scary, too, because it starts to learn who you are based on your questions. It's weird. I'm not a fan. I hope it goes away, but the problem is people rely on these things, just like Google. We talked about Google years ago, how no one thinks for themselves. They Google it. So maybe it's just gonna be the next kind of iteration of Google, for example."

KAMELOT will release a new album, "Dark Asylum", on August 28 via Napalm Records.

So far, two singles have been made available from the effort, "Ashen World" and "Godlike Alchemy".

Longtime KAMELOT producer Sascha Paeth returned to helm the LP, alongside Jacob Hansen, who oversaw mixing and mastering.

Ignacia Fernández, the 28-year-old model who was crowned Miss World Chile 2025 (Spanish: Miss Mundo Chile) during last year's finals of the talent competition, makes a guest appearance on the songs "Ashen World" and "Sanctuary".

"Dark Asylum" unfolds through fifteen interconnected compositions that expand the RavenHill narrative while moving between orchestral passages, heavy guitar-driven arrangements, atmospheric textures, and character-based storytelling.

Formed in Florida in the early 1990s, KAMELOT became one of the defining names in modern symphonic and progressive power metal through albums such as "The Fourth Legacy", "Karma", "Epica", "The Black Halo", "Ghost Opera", "Silverthorn" and "The Awakening". Across more than three decades, the band has built an international following through conceptual storytelling, orchestral arrangements, and ambitious live productions.