News

Paul McCartney announces one final Beatles song using AI

While some celebrities have turned their backs on artificial intelligence technology to enable their work, Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney has relied on it to create the group’s “final” song.

In a new interview, the singer revealed he used technology to “extract” the late John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to eventually complete the track.

Speak with BBC Radio 4’s Today programmeMcCartney stated, “We just finished it and it will be released this year.”

Although he did not reveal the name of the song, it is believed to be a 1978 composition by Lennon entitled “Now And Then.”

McCartney received the demo from Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, in 1994. It is said to be a set of songs on a tape called For Paul, which he recorded before his death in 1980.

In the mid-’90s, McCartney, Ringo Starr and the late George Harrison worked unsuccessfully together to complete their former bandmate’s “Now And Then” demo – to no avail.

“George didn’t like it,” the former Wings frontman told Q magazine in 1997. “Since the Beatles are a democracy, we didn’t do it.”

The Beatles in 1967
The Beatles in 1967

Icon and image via Getty Images

This isn’t the first time McCartney has turned to AI, as he used the same process to do a “duet” with Lennon while on tour recently.

″[‘The Beatles: Get Back’ director Peter Jackson] “I was able to free John’s voice from a flimsy piece of cassette tape,” he continued on the radio show.

“We had John’s voice and a piano, and he could separate them with AI. You tell the machine, “That’s the voice.” That’s a guitar. Lose the guitar.’

“So when we came to do the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had [and] We could take John’s voice and clean it through this AI.

“Then we can mix the record as usual. So it gives you a kind of wiggle room.”

McCartney’s revelation comes days laterblack mirror” Creator Charlie Brooker said his Attempt to use artificial intelligence Writing an episode of the hit sci-fi series didn’t go quite so well.

In a recent interview with Empire MagazineThe Emmy-winning author revealed that he approached ChatGPT to write an episode for the Netflix show, but that the end product was completely off the rails.

“I played around with ChatGPT a bit,” Brooker said. “The first thing I did was type ‘generate Black Mirror episode’ and it came up with something that sounds plausible on first glance, but sucks on second glance.”

Related Articles

Back to top button