The world of artificial intelligence goes above and beyond. It presents the world with possibilities that no one knew existed. This unique capability came to aid the most influential band of all time, The Beatles. In a conversation with the BBC, the singer and songwriter Paul McCartney said that they used artificial intelligence (AI) to extract and clean up the vocals of their former bandmate, John Lennon. They extracted Lennon’s voice from an old recording, which allowed them to feature it in their upcoming track. John Lennon was murdered in 1980 in New York City.
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In the BBC’s Today program, Paul McCartney said in response to a question about AI, “It’s a very interesting thing, you know. It’s something we’re all sort of tackling at the moment and trying to deal with.” McCartney said that the director of “Lord of the Rings,” Peter Jackson, was able to extract Lennon’s voice “from a ropey little bit of cassette.” In 2021, Peter Jackson released an eight-hour documentary that was titled “The Beatles: Get Back.” It featured colourized, cleaned-up archive footage of the band. With the help of AI, Lennon’s voice was distinctly identified amidst the instrumentals and background interference.
McCartney further said, “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.” The singer-songwriter further added, “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI, so that then we could mix the record as you would normally do. It gives you some sort of leeway.”
On McCartney’s recent tour, he performed songs that had a cleaned-up Lennon vocal track, along with a video of the artist on stage with him. The tour also included a headline slot at Glastonbury Festival. The experts in the music industry have been working on the potential that is present in the latest technological advances and the ethics of posthumously recreating artists.
Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA previously told CNBC that he was concerned about the production of “deep fakes” for his show “ABBA Voyage,” which employs motion capture and cutting-edge real-time graphics to make the band perform as de-aged digital avatars. McCartney added, “There’s a good side to it and then a scary side, and we’ll just have to see where that leads.”
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In another interview with the BBC, the Forrest Gump and Cast Away actor, Tom Hanks, said that artificial intelligence can be used to recreate his image even after he passes away. This could ensure Hanks continued to appear in movies “from now until kingdom come”. However, he acknowledged that these advancements carry artistic as well as legal challenges.
