‘The Beatles’ band members’ voices had already been separated using AI technology for the 2021 Peter Jackson docu-series ‘The Beatles: Get Back’
A new Beatles song is in the works and will come out this year.
More than half a century after their breakup, The Beatles are releasing a new song that will have John Lennon’s voice.
Sir Paul McCartney told the BBC, artificial intelligence helped in making the song.
How?
Sir Paul explained, “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this A.I., so then we could mix the record, as you would normally do.”
John Lennon was fatally shot outside his New York apartment in 1980. Following her husband’s death, Yoko Ono later gave an old demo tape to McCartney that Lennon had recorded. The tape was labeled “For Paul.”
The Beatles band members’ voices had already been separated using AI technology for the 2021 Peter Jackson docu-series The Beatles: Get Back, the same was applied to John Lennon’s demo tape.
Fans suspect the yet-unnamed number will be the unfinished 1978 love song “Now and Then.”
Not the first
At the 2022 Glastonbury Festival, McCartney used similar AI tech to perform a virtual duet with the late John Lennon.
The question of legality
The use of AI to isolate a singer’s voice and record it with other instruments is completely legal and different from using artificial intelligence to generate or mimic the voice of artists to make a song.
Just in April, Drake and The Weeknd’s AI-generated song went viral on TikTok without their knowledge or involvement. This prompted discussion on copyrights related to AI music.
Though the legality of using AI in creative fields is still debated, using it for voice duplication to scam others is illegal. Read our next story to know how just a three-second recording of your voice can be used by scammers.