(TheLastPatriotNews.com) – Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles would release one final song made with artificial intelligence (AI) extractions of late band member John Lennon’s voice from an old recording.
“We just finished it up and it’ll be released this year,” McCartney told the BBC Radio 4 program “Today,” as cited by The Daily Caller.
Even though he didn’t reveal the song’s title, reports claim it is a 1978 demo named “Now and Then.”
Lennon, who was murdered in 1980, recorded the song as a potential third single for The Beatles Anthology project, but the demo was abandoned and never released.
Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono gave the demo to McCartney last year on a cassette tape with songs. The cassette was entitled “For Paul” and was made by Lennon shortly before he was killed.
The “For Paul” songs are from the lofi genre and were recorded onto a boombox in Lennon’s New York City apartment, with him playing the piano.
McCartney said the same AI technology isolate the Beattles’ voices from background sounds for director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.”
“[Jackson was] able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette and a piano. He could separate them with AI, he’d tell the machine, ‘That’s a voice, this is a guitar, lose the guitar,'” McCartney explained, as cited by AP and The Washington Times.
“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had that we worked on. 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 do. It gives you some sort of leeway,” the singer elaborated.
The 80-year-old said he was excited and concerned with the new AI technology.
“I’m not on the internet that much [but] people will say to me, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s a track where John’s singing one of my songs,’ and it’s just AI, you know,” McCartney said.
“It’s kind of scary but exciting, because it’s the future. We’ll just have to see where that leads,” he concluded.
