While My AI Gently Weeps – A New Beatles Finale! 

Soon after releasing a text-to-music model based on Transformer architecture, MusicGen, Meta recently introduced Voicebox that synthesises speech across six languages and performs noise removal, content editing, and audio style transfer.

Earlier this year, Google also unveiled MusicLM, a high-fidelity generative model that creates music from text prompts. It outperforms older systems, maintaining audio quality and fidelity. Microsoft entered this space pretty early with Transformer-based Museformer that improves attention mechanisms to efficiently model long sequences and generate music with better structures.

These advancements in music generation have matured to a level now where it has helped iconic British band The Beatles complete its last, unfinished song ‘Now and Then’, bringing John Lennon’s voice back to life.

“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles’ record, it was a demo that John had [and] we were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI,” said legendary musician Paul McCartney, in an interview with BBC Radio.

The last song by The Beatles is actually a demo given to McCartney by Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, recorded on a cassette while Lennon played the piano. McCartney previously worked on Lennon’s compositions ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ using AI. With AI assistance from the ‘Get Back’ documentary, McCartney mixed the song, allowing him to perform with Lennon during his recent tour.

From an early Cavern Club gig (Source: BBC)

How Did They Do It?

Well, this is not the first time that The Beatles have sought AI for music. Apparently, composer and machine learning engineer Emile de la Rey and a team at Wingnut Films, led by the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy maker Peter Jackson, collaborated with machine learning researcher Paris Smaragdis to create a neural network called MAL for the making of the 2021 ‘Get Back’ documentary.

MAL used ML to isolate individual voices and instruments in The Beatles recordings, aiding enhancements and remixes and allowing Paul McCartney to virtually collaborate with John Lennon during a recent tour. Traditional methods of isolating voices and instruments from a mixed recording often result in reduced sound quality or interference from other elements.

However, MAL could identify and extract specific audio elements, recreating them realistically based on trained samples. This breakthrough facilitated the boosting of voices in noisy situations and the creation of surround sound remixes for the film.

Subsequently, the team leveraged the same technology to separate the original master tapes of The Beatles’ 1966 album ‘Revolver’, which producer Geoff Martin used for the album’s 2022 remix.

Although no official comments were received from Wingnut Films and Smaragdis, speculation suggests that similar technology may have been used for the new song, based on McCartney’s remarks. We reached out to Wingnut Films and Paris Smaragdis for more information but have yet to receive any input from them.

AI Music Leaves Everyone in Splits

This is not the first time that AI has made its way into the music industry. But musicians have given mixed responses towards AI-generated music. McCartney said in the interview, “It’s kind of scary but exciting because it’s the future.”

The Beatles’ first ever colour photograph (Source: The Telegraph)

Last month, the AI-generated song ‘Heart on My Sleeve’ went viral for having the voices of Drake and The Weeknd but was soon removed from Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, and YouTube as Universal Music Group claimed copyright infringement. Although Drake did not react to this song, previously, he took to Instagram to express his displeasure over the AI-generated version of himself rapping to Ice Spice‘s popular track ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’.

Other AI-generated songs, like ‘Winter’s Cold’ by AI Drake, have faced similar copyright issues. According to a report from Financial Times, Spotify has taken down approximately 7% of songs produced with the AI-generated music platform Boomy from its platform in response to a complaint by Universal Music Group, which accused Boomy of artificially inflating its streaming figures using automated accounts.

Echoing similar views, The Police frontman Gordon Sumner (Sting) warned everyone against AI-generated music calling it a “battle we all have to fight”.

However, on the other hand, we have pop singer and Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend Grimes embracing it with open arms as long as she gets her royalties. She launched Elf.tech, user-friendly AI software that assists producers and songwriters in making it seem like she is singing their songs. The tool, called GrimesAI-1, has already been used for over 15,000 vocal transformations, resulting in more than 300 complete songs submitted for distribution on streaming platforms.

Final gig together (Source: Far Out Magazine)

“The music industry’s opposition makes it easier to reject things but a rebellious moment can benefit AI’s safety and cultural productivity. Early addressing of unpopular ideas is preferable, even if it involves Grimes,” she told The New York Times.

Additionally, popular DJ and producer David Guetta used AI to include Eminem‘s voice in one of his songs during a live performance, but did not release it commercially. In a BBC interview, Guetta said, “The future of music is in AI”.

The whole conversation around copyright issues in AI generated music is messy and similar to what happened with the likes of Getty, Shutterstock, Adobe in regard to AI image generation. However, eventually, Getty Images partnered with Bria for ethical AI-powered image editing tools, while Midjourney and Shutterstock collaborated with OpenAI for generative AI tools. And now Adobe is killing it with its partnerships with Google, Nvidia and so on.

Like they say, all good things come to an end. But hardcore fans, having grown up on The Beatles music, are now in a puddle of emotions, slowly realising that the loop is finally going to close. They have to make peace with the fact that there is not going to be another song from these legends to fill the void.

While AI music creation is still emerging, it doesn’t surpass human artistry. As we await breakthroughs that challenge existing norms and hurdles, let’s revel in the timeless The Beatles classic ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’.

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