"Now and Then", a new song from The Beatles, was created with the assistance of AI The Beatles will release what is said to be their last ever song this week, pieced together from recordings spanning more than four decades – and it would not have been possible without AI. Now and Then has been edited together from a recording of the late John Lennon playing piano and singing at his home in New York in 1979. Now, artificial intelligence has been used to extract usable sections from that noisy tape. These have been combined with guitar tracks from the late George Harrison, recorded in 1995 when efforts were made to finish the song. These were reportedly called off due to poor sound quality, which AI has now been able to solve.

New York City musician Jules Avalon reflects on the power of John Lennon and the Beatles at Strawberry Fields in Central Park, located across the street from where Lennon was murdered on Dec. 8, 1980. Paul McCartney befuddled Beatles fans last month when he announced the band would be releasing a record featuring the late John Lennon, with the help of artificial intelligence. "When we came to make what will be the last Beatles record it was a demo that John had – that we worked on and we just finished it up – it'll be released this year. We were able to take John's voice and get it pure through this AI so that then we could mix the record as you would normally do," he told BBC Radio 4's Today show. Fans began questioning why the Beatles would do such a thing, sharing their disdain on social media.

New York City musician Jules Avalon reflects on the power of John Lennon and the Beatles at Strawberry Fields in Central Park, located across the street from where Lennon was murdered on Dec. 8, 1980. Paul McCartney announced Tuesday that artificial intelligence has been used to help create the "last" ever Beatles song, featuring the voice of John Lennon. In an interview with BBC Radio, McCartney, speaking about AI, said "we were able to use that kind of thing when Peter Jackson did the film'Get Back' where it was us making the Let It Be album." "And he was able to extricate John's voice from a ropey little bit of cassette where it had John's voice and a piano – he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine'that is a voice, this is a guitar, lose the guitar.' And he did that," McCartney continue.

In 2009, a new version of the demo, without the background noise, was released on a bootleg CD. Fans have speculated that this recording may not have been available in 1995, suggesting it was stolen from his apartment, along with other personal effects, after his death.

We can learn a lot from nature if we listen to it more--and scientists around the world are trying to do just that. From mountain peaks to ocean depths, biologists are increasingly planting audio recorders to unobtrusively eavesdrop on the groans, shrieks, whistles and songs of whales, elephants, bats and especially birds. This summer, for example, more than 2,000 electronic ears will record the soundscape of California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, generating nearly a million hours of audio. To avoid spending multiple human lifetimes decoding it, researchers are relying on artificial intelligence. Such recordings can create valuable snapshots of animal communities and help conservationists understand, in vivid detail, how policies and management practices affect an entire population.

The use of artificial intelligence is set to revolutionize how people create music but still, robots will not replace humans in the art of making melodies, attendees of a conference about art and music were told on Sunday. "Artificial intelligence will not replace good artists and composers," François Pachet, a scientist, composer and the director of the Spotify Creator Technology Research Lab, told participants of the TechnoArt 2019 conference in Tel Aviv. "AI will change the way people make art, but it won't replace them." Pachet is considered a pioneer of computer music, and specifically its interaction with AI. At Spotify he leads development of AI-based tools for musicians.

The Beatles may have disbanded decades ago, but thanks to artificial intelligence, the group is being reanimated -- sort of. Researchers at Sony are at work on an algorithm capable of generating new songs based on iconic musical styles, and their first crack at putting it in action starts with the iconic rock band. The song is called "Daddy's Car," which bears an eerie resemblance to the many songs that John, Paul, George, and Ringo used to play. It was made using a system called FlowMachines developed by the team at Sony CSL Research Laboratory, and was trained on a huge database of 13,000 songs. Once it understands a desired style, it can, with the help of a producer/arranger, churn out new songs in a variety of musical styles.