Sir Paul McCartney has teased a new – and final – Beatles record to be released later this year, but it’s not a vault or lost track… but one created with artificial intelligence.
McCartney told the BBC he had used AI to ‘extricate’ John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to complete a decades-old song.
“We just finished it up, it’ll be released this year,” he said.
During Peter Jackson’s ‘Get Back’ documentary of the band, dialogue editor Emile de la Rey trained computers to recognise the Beatles’ voices and isolate them.
“[Jackson] was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette,” McCartney said.
“We had John’s voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine: ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar’.”
McCartney said they were able to take Lennon’s voice and get it ‘pure’ through the AI.
“Then we could mix the record as you would normally do.”
He did admit concern for the technology, but ultimately was excited.
“It’s kind of scary but exciting, because it’s the future. We’ll just have to see where that leads.”
