How producers used AI to finish The Beatles' 'last' song, 'Now And Then'

https://www.npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2023/11/02/ [login to see] /the-beatles-last-song-now-and-then
This morning, The Beatles finally released their hotly anticipated "last" song, and as many fans speculated, the record is the completed version of John Lennon's love song called "Now And Then."

Paul McCartney first teased the song's release this June on BBC Radio 4. The record has a long history, which includes a demo recorded by Lennon in the late '70s in his residence at The Dakota in New York.

As producer Giles Martin explains, a big part of why "Now And Then" has been in production limbo for so long is due to the poor quality of the cassette tape.

"The very original recording is just John playing the piano with TV in the background," Martin tells World Cafe. "That's part of this technology — we could now extract John from the piano and from the television."

Martin, who co-produced "Now And Then" with McCartney and Electric Light Orchestra frontman Jeff Lynne, says machine learning technology allowed them to isolate Lennon's vocals in a way that previously wasn't possible.