Back in November, I wrote about the Beatles pioneering use of artificial intelligence to release a new single. In particular, the band has said the technology helped them "clean up" the vocal track taken from a muddled old demo tape of their mate John Lennon, who died tragically in 1980.
Notably, this wasn't the first time the Beatles had released new music since Lennon's death, just the first time they used AI to do so. The band also released two "new" songs in the 1990s using technology of that era to polish up old recordings of Lennon singing.
To demonstrate how the old tech performed at cleaning up the recordings, versus how AI performed at the same task, below are YouTube clips of the three "new" Beatles songs in chronological order of release. To my ear, the last one is strikingly clearer than the first two -- a useful, tangible demonstration of the computational power of AI in general.
But hey. Judge for yourself. I recommend listening to these songs through a good headset, if you have one at hand:
Free as a Bird
Released as a Beatles single in December 1995. No AI here, obviously...
Real Love
Released as a Beatles single in March 1996. Again, no AI...
Now and Then
Released as a Beatles single in November 2023. This is the only one of the bunch that employed AI in the studio production...
What do you think? I'm definitely curious to hear other listeners' thoughts and feedback on this, if you have a moment. Just drop me an email at peter[at]pmckay[dot]com, please.