I occurred to catch among the Grammy Awards final evening, and whereas pop, rap, and nation undoubtedly took middle stage, it was the Greatest Rock Efficiency class that almost all caught my consideration. The award went to The Beatles for his or her track “Now and Then,” which is a complicated sentence in 2025. You could be conscious The Beatles operated largely within the Nineteen Sixties, not the 2020s, and seeing as solely half the group remains to be alive, profitable a Grammy for a brand new track may sound a bit unusual.
Nonetheless, the track is new—no less than, as new as a Beatles track will be. The observe dropped in the direction of the tip of 2023, and is constructed from a demo John Lennon recorded shortly earlier than his dying. Within the ’90s, the residing three Beatles members (Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison) tried to complete the track, however by no means accomplished it, as the unique audio high quality was too poor. Fashionable expertise, nonetheless, made it potential to create the product you hear right now.
I really like The Beatles, however the track itself is not actually what I paid consideration to. (I did not actually give it a lot thought till Sunday.) As an alternative, an announcer made it clear the track was produced with AI, an announcement that, in 2025, elicits something from a watch roll to a heavy sigh from this tech editor. AI-generated music may be very a lot a actuality right now. Whereas there are some convincing outcomes from these AI-generated instruments, there are many tells to look out for. The concept that The Beatles would put out a track with some stage of AI era did not sit nicely with me, and I guess many others on the market.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to notice the distinction between AI-generated, and AI-produced. They sound the identical, however they don’t seem to be. I wish to be clear: “Now and Then” shouldn’t be an AI-generated track: Nobody is tapping AI to recreate the voice of John Lennon to make one other award-winning track.
Not that form of AI
AI would not simply imply the artificially generated content material we’re all accustomed to. Whereas it looks like AI took over our lives with the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022, firms have embedded the tech in our services for lots longer than that.
AI is, maybe, a little bit of a misnomer. On this context, machine studying is a little more correct. Machine studying is, very merely, when a program is ready to adapt and develop primarily based on the information it experiences—much like how our minds work. You feed this system coaching information, and it adjusts its assumptions and outputs accordingly. Whereas the precise course of is far more difficult than this, machine studying empowers applications to do some nice issues.
A kind of issues is audio observe separation: A part of the explanation the “Now and Then” venture was shelved was as a result of they could not correctly combine the track, since Lennon’s unique recording was so tough. However utilizing an audio enhancing device powered with machine studying, producers have been in a position to separate Lennon’s vocals from the piano. Neither the piano nor the vocals have been generated with AI—quite, the device was in a position to break these tracks aside, so producers, together with the 2 residing Beatles, might construct upon them to file, combine, and ship a accomplished track. McCartney posted as a lot on X the summer season earlier than releasing the track:
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For a lot of causes, I am joyful this “AI Beatles track” did not artificially deliver again John Lennon. It is genuinely candy to have a track Lennon began many years in the past, correctly completed by his former bandmates, with Lennon’s son accepting the award on the band’s behalf.
The music video, then again, undoubtedly pushes issues a bit additional, juxtaposing archival footage of deceased Beatles members John Lennon and George Harrison alongside present footage of McCartney and Starr. (It was produced by Peter Jackson, who each produced Now and Then, in addition to the 2021 Beatles documentary Get Again.) Nonetheless, it is extra bizarre than anything, and definitely is not a product purporting to characterize actuality—versus a lot of the AI-generated content material you encounter within the wild.