On Tuesday, BBC Radio 4's Today program aired an interview with Paul McCartney in which he announced that thanks to AI technology, a "final Beatles record" has been finished and will be released later this year. He said that AI techniques have isolated John Lennon's vocals from an old cassette tape demo, enabling him to complete the song.
Though McCartney did not provide the song's title, speculation points towards it being "Now And Then," a 1978 Lennon composition, which McCartney has mentioned wanting to finish in the past. In 1995, the three living Beatles considered including the song in their Anthology series (similar to "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love") but abandoned it due to quality issues and George Harrison's refusal to work on it. Harrison died in 2001.
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During the making of the 2021 Get Back documentary, composer Emile de la Rey and a team of engineers at Peter Jackson's Wingnut Films worked with machine learning researcher Paris Smaragdis of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to develop a neural network called "MAL" (Machine Assisted Learning, also a nod to Beatles roadie Mal Evans) to isolate voices and musical instruments in Beatles recordings. Similar vocal isolation allowed McCartney to virtually duet with Lennon on a recent tour.
(Score: 2, Touché) by kreuzfeld on Sunday June 18 2023, @11:28AM (5 children)
As one of the 0.01% who never cared much about the Beatles and their music, one way or another, I can only say: meh.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aafcac on Sunday June 18 2023, @02:42PM (2 children)
Arguably the more interesting bit is that the technology that was used could potentially rescue other abandoned projects that might be of artistic merit. Often times the vocalist or one of the instrumentalists is the only part of the recording that is truly irreplacable. Being able to surgically remove it and modify it as little as possible before compositing it with replacements for the other part could lead to a lot of media that wasn't worth releasing in it's current form being released.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Sunday June 18 2023, @02:59PM (1 child)
Are not restorations already quite good, not that they couldn't get better? This seems more like the last money-grab. All the fans and then some will buy it (or stream it or whatever) even if they are not fans they'll get it for the novelty of it being the lost-AI-Lennon tune or something such. Also as only Ringo and McCartney are left alive, to the best of my recollection -- plus whomever owns all the rights to the songs McCartney owns a lot of them, Sony another piece and Michael Jackson used to own a bunch. They might want to cash in before their eventual demise.
Not that they are not already fairly well off etc but I somehow doubt it's for artistic reasons, even tho he has apparently claimed he would like to finish the song for years. It's sort of how George Lucas managed to make all those new versions and remasters and final super directors cut versions of the three Star Wars movies as tech progressed and this was always how he had intended it to look but he just couldn't imagine or previously create his final version. Until the tech caught up with him -- again and again and again as all the nerds kept buying all the copies of whatever was the currently final version.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday June 18 2023, @10:37PM
It depends on the source, we don't really know what is in various libraries or there.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday June 18 2023, @06:51PM
Me neither. They predate me for starters but from that era I much prefer the Berlin School [wikipedia.org] of music.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 20 2023, @02:33PM
I'm not much into the Beatles or most music for that matter. I thought the story was interesting due to their actual provable beneficial use of AI tech.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Funny) by mechanicjay on Monday June 19 2023, @06:05AM
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.