How Paul McCartney and The Beatles are using AI to finish music for what could be his final album

The debate on the use of artificial intelligence in music continues, after it received praise from the likes of Grimes and criticism from both the Drake and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye camp. But from the annals of musical history comes a name that has revealed how AI has helped with completing a series of demos that may form a final album of one of music’s most hallowed names - Paul McCartney.

Revealing the news to BBC Radio 4 this morning, the “Hey Jude” writer admitted that he used AI to help with a series of unreleased Beatles demos he received from the widow of his late writing partner, John Lennon. The technology had been used to "extricate" John Lennon's voice from an old demo so he could complete the song and though Sir Paul did not name the song, music insiders and Beatles historians believe it is likely to be a 1978 Lennon composition called ‘Now And Then’.

Sir Paul had received the demo a year earlier from Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono. It was one of several songs on a cassette labelled "For Paul" that Lennon had made shortly before his death in 1980. "We just finished it up and it'll be released this year," he explained, marking the first new music from the Fab Four since the release of the career spanning “Anthology” in 1995 - which included ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ marking the Beatles' first "new" material in 25 years

McCartney was said to be inspired to an extent by the Peter Jackson documentary “Get Back,” which made use of isolating vocals and voices and cleaning up the background noise to get the most audible version of the conversations and rehearsals the band had. The same process allowed McCartney to "duet" with Lennon on his recent tour, and for new surround sound mixes of Beatles' ‘Revolver’ album to be created last year.

"He [Jackson] was able to extricate John's voice from a ropey little bit of cassette," McCartney told Radio 4's Martha Kearney. "We had John's voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine. 'That's the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar'.

"So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles' record, it was a demo that John had [and] we were able to take John's voice and get it pure through this AI.Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway."

Though McCartney is happy to have AI assist in his musical endeavours, he is wary of its other applications in other artforms. "I'm not on the internet that much [but] people will say to me, 'Oh, yeah, there's a track where John's singing one of my songs', and it's just AI, you know? It's kind of scary but exciting, because it's the future. We'll just have to see where that leads."

The furore with some musicians and their apprehension towards AI stems from a number of AI generated songs credited to both Drake and The Weeknd, both of which charting on the Spotify week charts before being taken down by order of both musicians' collective record label.