AI Helps Complete Beatles’ Final Song Featuring John Lennon

It’s been over five decades since popular rock sensation band The Beatles succumbed to internal friction and broke up in 1970. In a recent development, Paul McCartney successfully reunited the band for a final song, utilizing the power of artificial intelligence.

The guitarist revealed that a forthcoming Beatles record is in the works, crafted with the assistance of new technology. As one of the last two surviving members of the iconic band, McCartney shared that to create the song, AI technology was employed to isolate the vocals of the late John Lennon from a previously recorded demo track (rumored to be “Now and Then”).

Paul  McCartney speaks on how AI was used in the process

During a recent BBC Radio interview, the 80-year-old spoke about the employment of AI technology to replicate and simulate the youthful voices of his bandmates. He explained that the technology had previously been used in creative work. “We were able to use that kind of thing when Peter Jackson did the film Get Back where it was us making the Let It Be album,” McCartney admitted. “And he was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette where it had John’s voice and a piano — he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, ‘That is a voice, this is a guitar, lose the guitar.’ And he did that.”

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McCartney disclosed that the successful usage in the movie made him believe in its possibility. “So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record – it was a demo that John had – that we worked on and we just finished it up, it will be released this year,” he detailed to BBC Radio. “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI so then we could mix the record as you would normally do. It gives you some sort of leeway. So there is a good side to it and then a scary side, and we will just have to see where that leads.”

Paul McCartney says AI is the future

Acknowledging his limited internet usage, McCartney confessed that while he may not be actively engaged online, he has come across AI-generated compositions incorporating the voices of his former bandmates. “I don’t hear that much because I’m not on the internet that much,” he explained, “but people will say to me, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s a track where you know, John’s singing one of my songs,’ and it isn’t, it’s just AI, you know?”

The singer also described the new technology as highly overwhelming but necessary, because it represents the future.”It’s a very interesting thing,” McCartney stated. “It’s something we’re all sort of tackling at the moment in terms of trying to deal with what it means.”

And to provide a look of what AI is capable of, listen to the below version of Lennon’s “Grow Old with Me,” one of the final tracks he recorded, which was released even though it wasn’t really refined. Not only does this version sound cleaner, but it’s now a Beatles track. At 1:45, Paul McCartney comes in with a verse, despite the fact he was not involved at all in the original. All thanks to AI.