21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Paul McCartney says A.I. got John Lennon’s voice on ‘last Beatles record.’

Beatles singer-songwriter Paul McCartney told the BBC that artificial intelligence was used to “extricate” and clean up the vocals of former bandmate John Lennon from an old recording, allowing them to feature in an upcoming track.

“It’s a very interesting thing, you know. It’s something we’re all sort of tackling at the moment and trying to deal with,” McCartney told the BBC’s “Today” program when asked about AI.

McCartney said “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson — who in 2021 released an eight-hour documentary called “The Beatles: Get Back” featuring colorized, cleaned-up archive footage of the band — was able to “extricate” Lennon’s voice “from a ropey little bit of cassette.”

AI was used to identify Lennon’s vocals as distinct from instrumentals and background interference.

The demix technology that Peter Jackson’s team of boffins used to extract the individual instruments so that Giles Martin could remix Revolver last year is light years ahead in terms of quality of what’s commercially available in audio restoration software such as Izotope’s RX line. The latter produces loads of audio artifacts when it spits out multi-track stems. Hopefully Jackson’s technology will filter down to prosumer level software, and/or the commercial software will improve in quality over time.