Paul McCartney is working with archive recordings of John Lennon to finish a “last Beatles record” through artificial intelligence (AI), set to be released this year. Let’s dive into that.

What Does That Mean?

McCartney told BBC that Peter Jackson (director of the “Lord of the Rings” films and the 2021 “The Beatles: Get Back” documentary) was able to “extricate” Lennon’s voice “from a ropey little bit of cassette.” In this case, that means that some version of an “AI-powered” stem separation tool (think Audioshake, LALAL.AI, melody.ml) was applied to old Beatles demo tapes to pull out Lennon’s voice and generate stems that can be worked with further.

What Doesn’t That Mean?