50+ years later, The Beatles are still making waves

Last year, The Beatles released a new song with the help of AI.

This year, “Now and Then” is up for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance at the Grammy Awards, putting the Fab Four up against some of today’s top artists including Sabrina Carpenter, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift.

Money can't buy me love (but it can buy the use of top-notch AI): The song originated from a demo recorded by John Lennon in the 1970s before his death, and features contributions from all four Beatles. The group previously tried to stitch a song together from the snippets, but the demo’s poor sound quality made it difficult to isolate Lennon’s voice from his piano playing.

Enter: Peter Jackson, filmmaker- and- restorer- extraordinaire. While filming a documentary on the Beatles in 2021 (Get Back), he and his team created technology that can take any soundtrack and split all the different components into separate tracks with machine learning (which they subsequently had to hide from Gollum). This was used to create “Now and Then.”

It’s making waves at the Grammys: The use of AI in music production has become a hot topic in recent years, with many artists divided over the ethics in an industry that values live talent. The current Academy rule states AI-assisted music must “enhance” rather than replace the work of humans in order to be submitted for Grammy consideration.

📅 Mark the cal: The 66th annual Grammy Awards will be held February 4 at 8 pm ET.