The Beatles were one of the biggest bands in its heyday, and its music is still in the hearts of people until now. Paul McCartney, a member of the legendary band, has created one last song with the power of artificial intelligence.
The Last Beatles Song
Despite all the hate that AI has been getting in the music industry after a few incidents, Paul McCartney believes in its positive aspects and is using the technology to give the world one last song from The Beatles. The song is set to be released this year.
The fact that McCartney used AI was revealed in an interview with BBC Radio 4, also stating that it was a demo that the late John Lennon worked on which they had just finished up. The AI's purpose was to extract the voice of Lennon from the demo to use it for the record.
McCartney did not specifically mention the title of the song, just that they have created one. Although, as mentioned in Interesting Engineering, it could be the unfinished composition that John Lennon created back in 1978 called "Now and Then."
He also expressed his amazement with AI technology when the documentary series about the Beatles back in 2021 was created. The series director, Peter Jackson, was able to "extricate" Lennon's voice to obtain clean audio of the musician's voice.
Jackson did so from a "ropey little bit of cassette" which played John Lennon's voice accompanied by a piano. AI was also used to separate the two sounds, with an impressed McCartney explaining how it functioned: "That's the voice, this is a guitar, lose the guitar."
The Beatles' bass guitar player sees AI as exciting because it was the future, but also acknowledges that it had a "good side and a scary side." Just as AI is now being used to create music in just a few seconds, McCartney stated that we will just have to see where it will lead.
While McCartney was more than happy about the abilities of AI as it gave him the chance to revive The Beatles one last time through a song, some artists are more annoyed as AI users are using their voices to create music.
AI Using the Voice of Musicians
With music artists, their voice is the most important in their careers. When an AI tool manages to use that voice to create music, it raises a few problems and may even call for legal action. Such an incident has already affected musicians like Drake and The Weekend.
Using artificial intelligence, a song titled "Heart on My Sleeve" was created which convincingly sounded like the two mentioned artists. The song became viral and was played across streaming platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok.
The song was immediately removed from Spotify as soon as the recording company of the artists stepped in, as reported by The New York Times. Universal Music Group brought up the matter of intellectual properties, referring to the AI creations as "fraud."
