The Beatles are back: Paul McCartney announces he will release the group's "last song" thanks to AI

The Beatles are back. Eighty-year-old singer Paul McCartney has revealed that the Liverpool-based band will release its "last song" more than half a century after they split up.

The song will once again feature the voices of the four singers thanks to artificial intelligence: "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," McCartney said during an interview on Radio 4, the BBC's radio station.

To do so, the singer explained, Lennon's voice was extracted from an old tape that the singer's widow, Yoko Ono, gave to Paul McCartney in 1994. As a result of this recording, and thanks to the work of producer Jeff Lynne, two new songs by the band were released: “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” released in 1995 and 1996, respectively. However, there was one song that could not be recovered. The same one that, experts believe, may be the one to see the light of day this year: “Now and Then.”

Composed in 1978, the song was part of the aforementioned tape but was unable to be released 25 years ago. There were several reasons for this. The first and most important was that one of the band members, George Harrison considered the song to be "garbage": "It didn't have a very good title, it needed a bit of reworking, but it had a beautiful verse and it had John singing. [But] George didn't like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn't do it," he explained to Q Magazine.

The AI cleaning process

However, they also had problems with audio quality. It was impossible to clean it up. There was a kind of persistent humming sound due to the electrical circuits in John Lennon's apartment. However, technological advances have now made it possible.

The job was done by Emile de la Rey, editor for Peter Jackson's Beatles documentary “Get Back.” He was the one who taught the artificial intelligence to clean up the audio, as McCartney explained to Radio 4:

However, using this technology is not without controversy in the field of music. Several artists, such as Sting, are against the use of artificial intelligence, while the Pet Shop Boys are in favor of using these advances to improve musical compositions.

Paul McCartney, who used AI to bring The Beatles' last song to light, agrees, but he is also aware of the dangers of using this technology: "It's a little scary but it's exciting, because it's the future. We'll have to see where it takes us," he said.