Much has been made of the capabilities of artificial intelligence and how it can affect artistic and creative pursuits such as painting or music, even when treated as an intrusion into the workforce. However, there is also good news in this area, such as the fact that the Beatles will be able to release a new song with the voice of John Lennon.

This was announced by the exbeatle Paul McCartney in the program Today from BBC Radio 4, where he assured that they had used this technology to “extract” Lennon’s voice from old recordings to complement the song they had recorded in the studio. “We just finished it and it will come out this year,” he explained.

Although he did not give specific titles, the BBC suggests it may be a 1978 composition by Lennon titled from time to time. This theme, as they put it, had already been considered a “reunion song” by the Liverpool four in 1995 when they made the compilation Anthology.

The recording that the AI ​​allegedly extracted Lennon’s voice from was a recording given to it by Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s widow. It was a tape titled “For Paul” that Lennon had recorded shortly before his death in 1980. It is a series of songs lo fi and home recordings on his piano in his New York apartment via a boom box.

from time to time it would be the last song left to record from those on that tape. The two othersFree as a bird And true lovewere cleaned up by producer Jeff Lynne, completed and released in 1995 and 1996 respectively, making it the newest Beatles material in 25 years.

This last song which remains unreleased is a love song with an apologetic tone and had gone through the studio but did not materialize due to differences in the group. “The song had a chorus, but it’s almost completely devoid of verses. We did the backing track, preliminary work that we haven’t really finished,” Lynne told the BBC. McCartney pointed out that George Harrison called the song “garbage”. “The Beatles being a democracy, we didn’t,” McCartney said in his final interview.

This is the Beatles’ first foray into AI, although some users were inspired by them to use it and even managed to release a song that sounded authentic to Liverpool. YouTube user Walter Neto used an AI program to “re-record” the song bananaphone by Canadian artist Raffi, dedicated to children, as if the voices of Paul, John and George sounded and applied their style.